Petrelis Files

Is Claude Allen Gay?

If you're following the story about former Bush advisor Claude Allen's arrest for defrauding department stores in the Washington area, cruise on over to Doug Ireland's blog for lots and lots of good background on Allen's record, which Ireland covered for the L.A. Weekly back in January 2005. If you don't already read Ireland on a regular basis, you should.

While you're at Ireland's blog, be sure to check out the comments section on his Allen posting because that is where Walter Armstrong, former editor of POZ magazine, raises this fascinating question about Allen and his sexuality:

Claude Allen on the Down Low?

I don't want to aimlessly pile rumor onto conjecture and gossip, but I think it is worth noting that Allen has long been widely spoken of as a closeted homosexual—and not only by his AIDS advocacte adversaries—which , if true, certainly enriches the story. He has been seen "out" on the scene for years, which should surprise no one, since the radical RIght has had, ever since Reagan, no small number of closeted gays eager to do the heaviest lifting.

Add to that, the burden of being a token black man in a white elite, and an Colin Powell but, if anything, an Uncle Tom.

If this is true, we an assume that Allen has spent two decades not only presenting a false face to the world but denying himself his own true desires. It doesn't take a psychoanalyst to guess that the cost of that would be a great deal of accumulated rage and perhaps even a wish to sabotage his carefully constructed fake public persona. That seems to me a possible explanation for why a man who has absolutely no need to steal repeatedly or compulsively—and who, as a public figure, has every reason
not to—might be driven, albeit unconsciously, to ruin. [...]

Thanks, Walter, for delving into a matter I've wondered about myself.

Don't for a moment think that Armstrong is the only one on the web grappling with the issue of Allen's sexual orientation, as you can see from this message posted almost three years ago on black gay writer and advocate Keith Boykin's site in response to Boykin asking if Allen was the next Clarence Thomas:

I happen to have gone to high school with both claude and his brother and upon reading the words he uttered concerning "queers" I find this very odd when in high school he was the "Queen of the Queers" and it is very easy to verify. I'll bet like most republicans, he is a closet homosexual and his family is just for show. Another Clarence Thomas? Good bet he can be used by the republicans for their plans while getting back at all of his detractors.

Posted by: XAVIER at July 12, 2003 11:53 AM

Mark my words, and those of others on the Allen arrest. The questions related to why he may have engaged in petty crime won't be going away any time soon, nor will the questions being raised about his sexual orientation.