A reader tries to wrap his head around this story:
Why is it that there is so little speculation that Manti Te’o may be in the closet? This seems like the perfect cover-up story. Te’o is Mormon, so obviously being gay is against his religion. Notre Dame is defending his story of being a victim of a hoax, but is it a surprise that the Catholic institution would want to keep his sexuality under cover?
It’s the perfect cover story (if it wasn’t completely fake). I mean … if the woman he loves died tragically, he has a long-term excuse for not being involved with any other women for years. It seems to me that many people close to him are complicit in advancing the story, to the point that it seemed much of his family had met “her” and were in communication with “her”. The Deadspin story links all of the various Twitter accounts, photos of “Lennay”, and much of the basis of the whole story to Te’o, his family, and friends or other acquaintances. He claimed to have met her (after a game at Stanford, visited her in Hawaii), but now says it was purely an online relationship? It all makes very little sense as described in most news stories I’ve read or watched so far.
To me, the only explanation for this seems to be that he is in the closet, and his friends and family went a bit overboard in perpetuating a cover-up story. Why is there no speculation about this possibility in the many news stories airing on every news and sports channel?
Another:
If it were true, the poor kid may be forced out of the closet. But he will also likely be drafted highly, and he could open the floodgates to all the major American male sports finally starting to accept openly gay players.
Update from another speculative reader:
I’ve been obsessed with the Manti Te’o story since it broke on Deadspin in a way that news stories don’t usually grab me. It’s a combination of being drawn to stories in which the truth turns out to be far more complicated than a simplistic story, a delight when hoaxes are unmasked, and a strong dislike of the human interest stories that seem to make up so much of popular sports coverage. So I’ve been reading everything I can about this story, and I have my own theory:
I don’t think Manti Te’o is gay. I think he greatly embellished his telling of his supposed relationship, but I think it’s completely consistent for a devout Mormon to be completely earnest, amazingly naive, and generally out of touch with the way in which normal relationships, gay or straight, usually proceed. But the general story of him being deceived, I think, is true.
If Te’o’a account is true, there is a hoaxer who was spending an enormous amount of time online and on the phone with him. Both the Deadspin article, and further reporting from TMZ.com make it clear that Ronaiah Tuiasosopo was involved in the hoax and probably the instigator. On a Utah sports talk radio show, Te’o’s uncle claimed that Ronaiah was trying to get close to Te’o in order to make money, using a fake leukemia foundation as cover.
Tuiasosopo comes from a big football family, and although he played high school football, his career never went beyond that. At present, he is a self-described actor, singer, dancer, and musician. He auditioned for The Voice, also telling a sob story involving a car accident.
I think Rohaiah Tuiasosopo is gay, and was living out his fantasy of a romantic relationship with a star football player through the online persona of Lennay Kekua. Te’o wasn’t the first football player that the Lennay Kekua persona interacted with. And other than a potential moneymaking scheme – and the elaborate detail of the hoax seems awfully inefficient if money was the only incentive -this is the only reason I can think of why a hoaxer would invest as much time as was reportedly spent courting Te’o.
The Dish 