Obama’s Alleged Ex-Girlfriend’s Letter Raised a Lot of Questions About His Sexual Orientation

When a letter supposedly written by Barack Obama to his ex-girlfriend reappeared in August 2023, raising questions about his sexual orientation, the rumors about him went crazy. The existence of the letter was first made public in the 2017 book Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama by David Garrow. According to the author, he had copies of Obama's love letters from three different women. Among the ex-partners was Alex McNear, with whom Obama had a relationship at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California in 1982.

In August 2023, Garrow said in an interview with Tablet Mag, "When Alex showed me the letters from Barack, she redacted one paragraph in one of them and just said, 'It's about homosexuality'." Until the original letter was discovered by the New York Post ten days later, the details of the censored paragraph remained a mystery. In 1982, Obama sent a letter to his ex-girlfriend, expressing his own 'androgynous' thoughts. In an August 2 interview with Tablet, Garrow detailed how, while researching the politician's early career, he managed to collect letters from three of Obama's previous lovers. When McNear sent Garrow the 40-year-old letter, the biographer speculated that she 'wanted to have her role known.' Garrow recruited college professor Harvey Klehr to manually transcribe the love letters after McNear sold them to Emory University. The 2017 book Rising Star also revealed that before meeting Michelle, Barack had proposed to another lady. Obama's ex-girlfriend Sheila Miyoshi Jager told the author: "In the winter of 86, when we visited my parents, he asked me to marry him." 

Later, The Post claimed to have seen a redacted version of the more than 40-year-old letter. The outlet revealed that the former commander-in-chief wrote, "In regard to homosexuality, I must say that I believe this is an attempt to remove oneself from the present, a refusal perhaps to perpetuate the endless farce of earthly life. You see, I make love to men daily, but in the imagination. My mind is androgynous to a great extent and I hope to make it more so until I can think in terms of people, not women as opposed to men. But, in returning to the body, I see that I have been made a man, and physically in life, I choose to accept that contingency." Obama married Michelle ten years after writing to McNear about his sexual orientation. The pair became the first Black president and first lady of the United States after welcoming two daughters, Malia, 24, and Sasha, 21, together.

Before Michelle, Barack had a fair number of girlfriends. According to David Maraniss' book, Barack Obama: The Story, Barack went on to Genevieve Cook after ending his relationship with Alex McNear. Obama's first true love, according to Maraniss, was Cook. As reported by Nicki Swift, next was Sheila Miyoshi Jager, who was regarded as Barack's greatest love before Michelle. In Dreams from My Father, Barack wrote that their bond was 'warm and hidden.' In an August 2 interview with Tablet, Garrow detailed how, while researching the politician's early career, he managed to collect letters from three of Obama's previous lovers.