Iron Man: In addition to the normal stresses you’ve talked about, you’ve had something tormenting you over the past few years. You’ve been private about it to date with the media, but now I understand you finally want to clear the air.
Bob Paris: Yes, I do. We’ve been talking about my life and things that have happened since 1983. In all the other times I’ve ever spoken in interviews, I’ve always skirted around in certain issues like my family. I’ve been protected by the bodybuilding media. The pressures that have been there came from a lot of different directions. You talk about going from the amateur to the pro level, but it was much more than that.
I’m gay. However, my burden is not my gayness but that I was raised by my family and by society to hate myself for being gay. I grew up being taught to dislike the person I really was. It was a very difficult cycle to break out of.
Basically, the point that I’m at in my life now is that I’ve developed a level of pride and a level of honesty and a level of self-assurance. I’ve fought very hard in overcoming a lot of the self-hate that is involved around the issues of gayness and a person’s acceptance and self-acceptance in society.
A lot of that strength has come from the fact that I have a real firm family base to operate from. My husband, Rod, is very important to me. We met over two years ago, and it was basically love at first sight. I was giving a seminar in Denver at the gym where he trained. I walked in, we looked at each other, and it was—BAM. We both knew we were destined to spend the rest of our lives together.
Rod is a former social worker who is currently a top body and fitness model. He’s preparing to go back to school either to get his master’s in clinical psychology or to get a law degree to pursue civil rights work.
This man has been responsible to a great extent for giving me the strength and the pride to be who I am. Because I’m a private person and I was also fighting my fear of the repercussions of being gay in both my profession and my society, I had to learn a new level of self-love.
To be totally honest, I have come very close to losing what I consider the one true love of my life. Rod felt very strongly that unless I became more open, proud and self-loving of who I was and stopped placing him second behind my career, it wasn’t worth bastardizing himself and the true love we had searched our whole lives for any longer.
What I’m doing in this interview, Lonnie, is setting the record straight. All my family, friends and peers know that I’m gay. I have been very open in every area except the media for the last two years. In the profession Rod and I are seen as a married couple, just like Lee and Robin Labrada are perceived as a married couple, so in a way this was just another brick in my wall of pride. We travel together all the time, as much as Rod’s work will permit, and are a normal married couple.
We live an average life, just like anyone else. My moral standards are as high as anyone else’s. We don’t sleep around. We have a wonderful dog, Samantha, and a blue and gold macaw named Barney who we dote on as our children.
We love many of the same things, particularly when it comes to outdoor activities. Our favorite vacation is when we go backpacking off in the wilderness for a week. Cycling is another one of our favorite pastimes. We are eventually planning to leave Los Angeles for a quieter, simple life, probably somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.
What I would like to do is not skirt this issue, but deflate its sensationalism and speak of the things that I am proud of in my life. I want people to know that when Bob Paris talks about his family, it’s not going to be avoided. He’s talking about Rod, his soulmate, the man who stands by his side and the person he stands by.
As he reveals in this video, he lost about 80% of his business and doors closed on his face after he came out. Still, he went on to be a gay activist and advocate for equality.
You'll also learn in this video that he and Rod called it quits but then he eventually met and married his husband Brian LeFurgey. The two now live in Canada.
Here are some of Bob's vintage bodybuilding photos:
Bob with ex-beau Rod Jackson:
And here's Bob with husband Brian LeFurgey:
Props to Bob for paving the way for other gay athletes.