Gay rumours eclipse Condi

From the Times of London:

The Enquirer described its article as “the ultimate guessing game among Hollywood fans – trying to figure out which big-name stars are gay”. The report went on: “According to the buzz among political insiders, it’s an open secret that . . . Rice is gay.”

The piece quoted an unnamed “in-the-know” blogger as saying that during her years as provost of Stanford University in California, Rice was “completely out as a lesbian and it was not a scandal, just a reality”. The paper referred to reports that in 1998 Rice bought a house with a “special friend”, another unmarried woman, a film-maker named Randy Bean.

It was far from the first time that she had been linked to lesbian rumours. In a recent biography of Rice, Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post’s diplomatic correspondent, noted that Bean, described as a “liberal progressive”, was her “closest female friend”. It was Kessler who discovered from a search of property records that Rice and Bean owned a house together.

Rice does not comment on her private life, and she is not an elected official, so her sexuality has never been a campaign issue. But the gay community has long been troubled by her association with conservative Republicans opposed to gay marriage, and with evangelical Christians who regard homosexuality as a sin.

At one point last year Rice was regarded as a possible Republican candidate in the 2008 White House race. Yet most commentators agreed that she was reluctant to run, and a Washington Post columnist concluded that she was “the longest of long shots”, as it indeed turned out.

The columnist Chris Cillizza made no mention of Rice’s sexuality, and it took an internet reader named Anne Roifes to remind the Post that high journalistic standards sometimes miss the point.

“It is widely believed in gay circles that Condi is a lesbian,” Roifes commented. “That could be one reason she will not run.”