In a new book about the US secretary of state, "The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy," Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Glenn Kessler gingerly broaches the issue of her personal life in writing about her "closest female friend," Randy Kessler, a "liberal progressive" documentary filmmaker who once worked for Bill Moyers. The two women own a home together and have a joint line of credit. Kessler wrote that he was told that Rice offered Bean financial assistance after medical problems put her friend into financial straits. The home was originally purchased by Bean, Rice, and Coit D. Blacker, a gay man who teaches at Stanford, where Rice served as provost prior to joining the Bush administration, and previously worked worked for both Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Rice, Bean, and Blacker are described as a "second family."
Kessler in his book looks at the rumors that have circulated about Rice's sexuality, while noting "she has built a wall of privacy around her that is never breached unfairly," and arguing that single professional women often "unfairly" face speculation they are lesbian.
On his Sirius Q radio program on September 13, Michelangelo Signorile spoke to Kessler, and said he pressed the author/reporter on what he thought all this meant, but to no avail. Signorile notes that Rice has been silent about the Bush administration's hostile policies toward the LGBT community.
Last fall, however, Rice oversaw the swearing-in of Dr. Mark Dybul, the administration's global AIDS coordinator (attended by Laura Bush), and raised Christianist right eyebrows by referring to the mother of Dybul's gay partner as his mother-in-law.
John Byrne looked at the Rice matter on Raw Story.
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