“Even though he may like getting his name in the newspaper and people talking about him, there would be a part of him that would be very, very anxious by all the talk.
“If it actually is true that they might be gay and people are speculating about it, you’re going to sort of make them feel threatened and endangered,” Drescher said, stressing that he was speaking hypothetically and not about a specific public figure. Jack Drescher, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and the author of “Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man,” said such speculation can be particularly damaging if the subject is actually gay and is not ready to come out on their own terms. “Number two … Why would you want to hide it? That is not the way I run my life.”īut while speculation about sexuality among gay friends has existed as long as gay people have, when the speculation moves to a public forum, it can be damaging, some experts say.ĭr. “The reason why it irritates me is because it means that somebody must think I’m lying.
