During a recent event, Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke about his mom fearing he was gay growing up because he had posters of male wrestlers and bodybuilders on his bedroom wall.
LONG BEACH – DEC 7: Arnold Schwarzenegger at the California Governor’s Conference on Women and Families at the Convention Center on December 7, 2004 in Long Beach, CaliforniaPhoto: Shutterstock
At the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures “An Evening with Arnold Schwarzenegger” event, the former California governor told the audience that his mom “was always looking at that wall,” as Insider reported.
“She said, ‘All of your friends have pictures of girls. Where did I go wrong?’ And she would cry. She was in front of the wall crying every day until she called the doctor, our house doctor.”
The doctor reassured his mom that he wasn’t gay, but instead just inspired by the men on his walls.
“He finally said, no, this is quite normal in the kids at this age. They idolize men that are strong. Don’t worry about it. He’s not gay,” Schwarzenegger said.
Schwarzenegger –who became the youngest Mr. Universe in 1967 when he won the competition at the age of 20 – has been inconsistent in his support for LGBTQ+ rights.
As California’s Republican governor from 2003 to 2011, he twice vetoed bills that would have given gay and lesbian Californians the right to marry, first in 2005 and again in 2007.
Schwarzenegger later reversed his opposition to marriage equality, calling on a federal judge to allow same-sex marriage in 2010. Following the Supreme Court’s landmark 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, the former governor said that he was happy that same-sex marriage had been legalized in the U.S.
