Not all male ballet dancers are gay — see Mikhail Baryshnikov — but enough are that Ronald Reagan was worried when his son, Ron, quit Yale University in 1976 to pursue a dancing career.
Christopher Buckley, the novelist son of William F. Buckley, discussed Reagan Sr.’s qualms with playwright John Guare in a Q&A published in the Lincoln Center Theater program for the play “The City of Conversation,” starring Jan Maxwell.
“My father and Reagan were close, and my dad had always acted as a kind of godfather to the Reagan children, so Reagan called up my dad and expressed to him his worry that this meant that his son played for the other team,” Christopher said.
“My dad ventured the opinion that all people in the arts might not be gay, but there wasn’t much he could really say about this, and, of course, we now know Ron’s not gay.”
Ron Reagan, 56, married Doria Palmieri, a clinical psychologist, in 1980. They live in Seattle.