getting resurrected by the legacy media—not as he was, but as the character they need him to be.
With their full cooperation, he has carefully crafted a
public image tailored to middle-of-the-road sensibilities—one that conceals the
more radical and uncomfortable truths about his early life. His latest
reflections on his relationship with Lawrence Goldyn, his gay college professor
at Occidental, are no exception.
According to Obama, Goldyn was a kind-hearted intellectual
who helped broaden his perspective on gay people. But I knew both men during
that era, and I can say with confidence: this is not the full story—not even
close.
When I met Barack Obama during his sophomore year at
Occidental College in December 1980, he struck me as a quiet, intensely
self-conscious young man. Unlike most of the male students I encountered, he
showed no apparent interest in women. In fact, my immediate impression was that
he was gay.
It’s no surprise to me that Obama chose Lawrence Goldyn as
his academic advisor. Goldyn, openly gay and politically active, was known on
campus as a trusted figure among gay and lesbian students. He wasn’t just a
professor—he was part of a broader network of support for students wrestling
with their sexual identity.
Unlike the other professors in young Obama’s orbit, Goldyn
was not a Marxist. Although Occidental employed him as an assistant professor
of political science, his most memorable role was that of an in-your-face
sexual revolutionary. For that very reason, I remember thinking Occidental made
the right call when it denied him tenure in 1981.
Obama’s recent comments suggest that Goldyn enlightened him
on gay identity. But this spin is merely a gentle pirouette designed to
distract us from a more substantial pattern.
Obama didn’t need anyone to explain gay culture to him—he
was already immersed in it. According to Mia Marie Pope, who claims she knew
Obama while he was a student at the exclusive Punahou School in Hawaii, he was
frequently in the company of older white gay men and seemed completely at ease
in that world.
Obama’s mentor back then, Frank Marshall Davis—a known
Communist Party member—authored a book under a pseudonym that included graphic
bisexual scenes. These were the kinds of influences Obama had before he ever
stepped foot on Occidental’s rose-covered quad.
We also have Obama’s bizarre poem “Pop,” published in 1981,
full of unsettling references to “amber stains” and “smell his smell”
connectivity—an earthy piece some have interpreted as a veiled account of
sexual intimacy with an older man.
Thanks to presidential historian David Garrow, we’ve learned
that Obama wrote letters to his then-girlfriend Alex McNear in which he openly
discussed his same-sex desires. Former classmates also recall his metrosexual
style, soft-spoken voice, and emotional distance from women. This wasn’t a guy
discovering gay identity through a class—it was someone already deep in the
experience, possibly trying to make sense of it all.
The Goldyn story is just one more example of Obama rewriting
his past to fit a more electable narrative. Just as he has airbrushed his
Marxist sympathies, blurred his religious convictions, and replaced real
individuals with fictional “composites” in Dreams from My Father, here
he repackages an advisor-student relationship to appear as a moment of
enlightened tolerance—when in fact it may have been something far more
personal.
Let me be clear: I’m not interested in shaming Obama for his
sexuality, whatever it may be. I am simply done with the absurd, unrepentant,
self-curated mythmaking.
If a conservative candidate had maintained this level of
personal obfuscation—on issues of sexuality, ideology, or even basic
biography—the press would have diced them up into nine pieces as quickly as
Dexter Morgan logs a souvenir blood sample. Meanwhile, the legacy media lets
Obama escape the truth of his past the same way the law enforcement officers do
in Dexter: Resurrection—by misreading every clue that points to guilt,
simply because the show must go on and the franchise must be protected.
The real Obama chose Lawrence Goldyn for the same reason other gay and questioning students did—because he felt a personal connection, not because he needed an education in tolerance. That’s not a crime. But pretending otherwise is part of a larger deception—the effort to protect Obama’s personal credibility and to prevent any alteration in how he is portrayed in U.S. history—as America’s first post-racial technocrat, rather than someone who intentionally rebranded to achieve power.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist. This article was first published in American Thinker on July 23, 2025.
