From HuffPo: “If Te’o were gay, why would a closeted gay man go to such extremes? I asked the question on my radio program yesterday and the phones lit up with gay men who’d done exactly the same thing, or were still engaged in it. Living in conservative parts of the country or working in professions in which they believe they’d be fired if it became known they are gay, they construct elaborate stories of girlfriends or wives who never quite make it to company functions — or who do, but are really good friends who stand in as girifriends or wives. (One of those “fake-date” women called the show too).

“Why, however, would T’eo need to have his girlfriend get ill and die off? There was pressure from T’eo’s family and from the media to meet her. True, he could have just broken up with her but that would not get the kind of attention that would embed his heterosexual identity in the sports media culture for some time to come, nor ward off questions of why he doesn’t have a new girlfriend. It would be perfectly acceptable if he didn’t date for a long time, traumatized by what happened.”

Read the whole article here.