The best books reveal new facts while confirming universal truths. A new interview shines a spotlight on a recent biography that does just that for Barack Obama. First, the new: Barack Obama confessed to his then-girlfriend that he regularly fantasized about having sex with other men, according to documents obtained by his liberal biographer, who believes Obama sought the spotlight because he has a “hole” in his heart “that needs to be filled.”

Pulitzer Prize-winner author David Garrow discovered the passage in a letter Obama wrote to his girlfriend at Occidental College, Alex McNear. “When Alex showed me the letters from Barack, she redacted one paragraph in one of them and just said, ‘It’s about homosexuality,’” Garrow told Tablet on Wednesday. Eventually, he tracked down the letter at Emory University, where he asked anti-Communist scholar Harvey Klehr to investigate. “They won’t let him take pictures. So Harvey has to sit there with a pencil and copy out the graph where Barack writes to Alex about how he repeatedly fantasizes about making love to men.”

The Making of Barack Obama

The media didn’t widely cover that detail when Garrow released his 1,472-page biography, Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, in 2017. The book also revealed that 18-year-old Obama and openly gay Occidental College professor Lawrence Goldyn developed a “friendship beyond the classroom.”

“Three years later, Obama wrote somewhat elusively to his first intimate girlfriend [McNear] that he had thought about and considered gayness, but ultimately had decided that a same-sex relationship would be less challenging and demanding than developing one with the opposite sex,” wrote Garrow. Garrow declined to answer whether Obama had ever acted out his same-sex fantasies, saying Obama “deserves … privacy.”

The revelations carry extra authority, because Garrow interviewed more than 1,000 people, including Obama, and let the president edit some chapters.

Goldyn was one of several LGBTQ figures to make an impression on a developing Barack Obama. As a child in Indonesia, Obama had a transgender nanny. A man named Turdi went by Evie. Obama “did see me trying on his mother’s lipstick sometimes,” said Turdi in 2012. “That used to really crack him up.”

Obama Waged War for the LGBTQ Agenda

His personal struggles and connections may help explain why Obama waged continual warfare for the LGBTQ agenda. He repealed the ban on open homosexuals in the military. He had the armed services host reeducation classes for soldiers everywhere from basic training to Afghanistan’s most war-torn regions. (“If a Marine spots two men in his battalion kissing off-duty at a shopping mall, he should react as if he were seeing a man and woman, according to the training materials,” the Associated Press reported.) Obama refused to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court, as judicial activists began overturning dozens of state marriage protection amendments. And he waged a bathroom jihad against girls who didn’t want teenage boys showering next to them.

Obama even dressed up his support for social revolution in the Bible. In 2008, Obama said the Sermon on the Mount justified his support for same-sex unions. Four years later, he found gay “marriage” in the Golden Rule. He said his reading of these verses struck him as “more central than an obscure passage in Romans.”

“The passage in Romans condemning homosexuality was not obscure to first century readers living in the Roman Empires,” corrected Denny Burk, professor of New Testament at Criswell College. “It’s only obscure to modern readers when they are looking for biblical grounds to justify that which God condemns.” The Apostle Paul classified homosexual relations as “vile affections” that lead to death (Romans 1:18-32). The early Church continued this teaching, which dates back to Creation. St. Justin Martyr (151 A.D.), condemned the “unmentionable iniquities” of those “mutilated for the purposes of sodomy.” Christianity has an unbroken, 2,000-year history of teaching sex belongs only within marriage.

Despite Obama’s sermonizing, Garrow wrote in his book that Obama “did not have a religious bone in his body.” He attended even the fire-breathing racist Jeremiah Wright’s church on rare occasions. It was all politics.

Passions Flood a Soul That Has No Compass

New details about Obama’s battles lift the veil on a very old warfare. “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would” (Galatians 5:17).

The passions flood a soul that has no compass — and Garrow says Obama is a human Etch-a-Sketch. Obama’s never “had any truly deep, meaningful policy commitments other than the need to feel and to be perceived as victorious, as triumphant.” He has almost no long-term relationships. His first autobiography, Dreams From My Father, is “not history. It’s all make-believe. Who knows what the real story is?”

“He’s not normal — as in not a normal politician or a normal human being,” said Garrow.

Obama’s Vessel is Hollow at Its Core

The huge turning point came after Obama lost a 2000 Democratic congressional primary to former Black Panther Bobby Rush. Everything after that became “a credentialing process” to move up to the White House. Garrow’s interviewer, David Samuels, believes even now Obama can’t let go of the levers of power. That’s why he stayed in D.C. Obama actually calls the shots in the Biden administration. He set up “a very odd and kind of spooky arrangement … outside the constitutional framework of the U.S. government.” And he did it all to feed his ego.

Garrow wasn’t so sure. But he said Obama’s whole life has been dedicated to filling a void. “The congressional loss creates, or deepens, or intensifies this hole that needs to be repaired, that needs to be filled,” said Garrow.

His biography described Obama’s heart in one memorable phrase: “The vessel was hollow at its core.”

That’s the universal struggle that Garrow documents. We’re all hollow at our core. God intended our hearts to be filled with His presence. When our sin breaks communion with the Holy Spirit, our souls fill the emptiness with earthly pursuits that “satisfy not” (Isaiah 55:2). In St. Augustine of Hippo’s most famous maxim: “You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”

Barack Obama and his fellow politicians are a perfect example of what happens when the God-shaped hole in our heart remains empty. They get bitter, and they cling to power or elitism, or antipathy toward people who are different than they are. They seek worldly glory and use their power “justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt.”

And even after they reach the pinnacle for the maximum time allowed by law, they can’t let go.

Mr. President, it’s time to move out of D.C. and on with your life. Let go of power, and let God rule your heart. Accept the light yoke and be “filled with joy, and with the Holy Ghost” (Acts 13:52). He’s the loving Father you’ve always been seeking.

Rev. Ben Johnson (@therightswriter) is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand. He is an Eastern Orthodox priest and the author of three books. His views are his own.