What Ayn Rand Hoped You’d Miss
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The Fountainhead

While Atlas Shrugged is considered her magnum opus by Rand fans (at any rate her heaviest doorstopper), it is The Fountainhead that most people actually read, with its dashing architect Howard Roark and his flashy girlfriend Dominique, not to mention the unforgettably smarmy Ellsworth Toohey symbolizing the stupidity of socialism. It is also in The Fountainhead that a deeply homoerotic relationship develops between the protagonist and his publisher friend Gail Wynand, and it is this connection that I wish to explore.

     The working title of The Fountainhead had been “Second Hand Lives,” because three of the main characters—Peter Keating, Gail Wynand, and Ellsworth Toohey—represented the condition of modern man, who lived for and through a collective enterprise of some kind (a newspaper, a government bureaucracy) rather than for himself. (Rand was comfortable with “masculine preferred” usages.) The contrast was her hero Howard Roark, a character constructed as, in Rand’s words, “a moral ideal”—a man who never compromised his principles as an autonomous individual. The switch to “The Fountainhead” followed Rand’s decision to make Howard Roark, that spume of creativity and virility, the main focus of the book.

         The novel begins with 22-year-old Roark being expelled from the architectural school of the Stanton Institute of Technology. Roark loves architecture and teachers recognize his talent. However, when assigned to design in a traditional style, say Tudor, Classical, or Gothic, he ignores instructions and turns in a design done in his own modernistic style. When the college dean calls these actions “insubordination,” Roark doesn’t disagree, but sees no point in learning traditional styles that he has already rejected.

         Sans degree, Roark finds work with the aging modernist architect Henry Cameron, who retires after collapsing at work. By contrast, classmate Peter Keating, much less talented but willing to give clients what they want, is hired by prestigious architect Guy Francon, whose daughter Dominique is bitter at a world that rewards her father for mediocre architecture and caters to a wide readership for the equally mediocre newspaper, the Banner, for which she writes an architecture/interior decorating column.

   Roark’s career collapses after Cameron dies, and Dominique finds her disillusionment with the world confirmed. In a kind of emotional self-immolation, she marries Keating. Then she meets Gail Wynand, the publisher of the newspaper the Banner, for which she used to work. Wynand resembles Dominique in that he too yearns for a world in which people strive to do their best and hold fast to ideals. And yet, he has grown wealthy as the publisher of what he knows to be a second-rate tabloid that panders to people’s worst instincts. Dominique is attracted to Wynand despite this compromise. Without too much fanfare, she divorces Keating and marries Wynand.

         Wynand is possessive of Dominique and resolves to build a country house where the two can truly be alone. Searching for an architect, he realizes that the buildings he most admires are those designed by the controversial modernist Howard Roark. Wynand approaches Roark to create a plan. Knowing that Wynand is married to the woman he loves, Roark readily agrees to design a home for his (unknowing) rival and Dominique.

         Thus are Howard Roark and the androgynously named Gail Wynand brought together in the novel. Rand herself acknowledged that Wynand’s love for Roark was “greater, I think, than any other emotion in the book.” However, she stoutly denied that the love was homosexual, calling it “love in the romantic sense”—which would still leave open a number of possibilities. Indeed, elsewhere she wrote that romantic love is the “passion that unites mind and body in the sexual act.”

         Let me state at this point that I don’t want to argue that Wynand was using Dominique as a “beard” to conceal his homosexuality. Both he and Roark have strong heterosexual attachments. At the same time, their attraction to each other is such that they should probably be seen as bisexual. The fact that Rand was asked about this matter means that I’m not the first to notice it. Rand’s denial suggests that she may not have been conscious of this undercurrent—or she deliberately planted it there but just wouldn’t fess up to it. Consider the following scenarios.

The Roark–Wynand Leg of the Triangle

As Roark works on the architectural assignment, the three legs of this heterosexual love triangle are frequently thrown together. Yet scenes often feature only two of its legs, and the dyad that gets by far the most coverage is not Roark and Dominique but Roark and Wynand. Despite Rand’s assertions to the contrary, the relationship between Roark and Wynand simmers with eroticism.

         In fact, a gay subtext appears as soon as Roark and Wynand meet. Wynand displays an acute awareness of and appreciation for the other man’s body: “Wynand saw Roark’s hand lying on the edge of his desk, the long fingers pressed to the glass. … He looked at Roark’s hand. He thought he would like to have a bronze paperweight made of it and how beautiful it would look on his desk.” Later: “Wynand saw the prints of the fingers left on the glass, distinct as if the skin had cut grooves in the surface and the grooves were wet.” Such close attention to another man’s body cannot help but suggest an erotic attraction, and it’s worth noting that this fascination with Roark is introduced right after they meet.

         In a later scene, we read that Wynand “stood outside and watched the way Roark walked through the structure, the way he turned his head or raised his hand, pointing. He noticed Roark’s manner of stopping: his legs apart, his arms straight at his sides, his head lifted; an instinctive pose of confidence, of energy held under effortless control, a moment that gave to his body the structural cleanliness of his own buildings. … And he wondered why he watched Roark.” Wynand may “wonder,” but an observant reader is apt to surmise that Wynand is falling in love.

         The admiration Wynand has for Roark’s body is again present when they relax by a lake, and Wynand thinks that he “liked to apprehend space and time … through the tan of Roark’s skin.” Watching his friend coming back from a swim, “Wynand looked at Roark’s body, at the threads of water running down the angular planes. He said, ‘You made a mistake on the Stoddard Temple, Howard, That statue should have been, not of Dominique, but of you.’” Here he has set up a direct comparison between the physical merits of Dominique and those of Roark, and he has made his choice.

         Wynand reflects that he could speak to Roark “without the need of disguise he had always experienced when he spoke to people.” He tells Roark: “I’ve been very obvious. … Nobody’s ever caused me to become obvious before.” Later, Wynand realizes that Roark makes him feel “as if his body were consciously made vulnerable.”

         Nor is the attraction entirely one-sided. There’s a scene in which Roark acknowledges his special feeling for Wynand, saying: “I don’t usually care whether I’m liked or not. I do care this time.” Rand describes their interaction in the language of seduction: “Wynand sat down on a fallen tree trunk. He said nothing; but his movement was an invitation and a demand. Roark sat down beside him.” She uses the word “intimacy” to describe the deepening relationship between the two men, and tells us that the expression on Wynand’s face when he talks with Roark is one of “sensual pleasure.”

         In other passages, a direct parallel is drawn between their feelings and those of a conventional male-female romance. Dominique tells her husband: “You look happy. That’s not the word. But it’s the nearest.” Wynand replies: “‘Light’ is nearer. I feel light, thirty years lighter. … It’s quite illogical and impossible and wonderful.” Dominique answers: “What the feeling usually means is that you’ve met someone. A woman as a rule.” Wynand closes the deal: “I have. Not a woman. A man.”

         We encounter Wynand in his office going over proofs: “He thought of Howard Roark and went on reading the Banner; it made things easier. … He turned the pages, thinking of Howard Roark.” Then: “But it hurts me, he thought. It hurts me every time I think of him. It makes everything easier—the people, the editorials, the contracts—but easier because it hurts so much. Pain is a stimulant also. I think I hate that name. I will go on repeating it. It is a pain I wish to bear.”

         Dominique’s situation—being married to one man but in love with another—would seem ripe for exploration, but Rand seems more interested in the feelings of and between the two men. Once during dinner Dominique notices to herself that “Wynand seldom looked at her.” In another scene, the trio becomes a duo—or a couple: “Dominique had excused herself after dinner. She had known that they wanted to be alone.”

         The men become closer: “At the end of a day, [Wynand] would come, unannounced, to Roark’s office or to his home.” On one occasion, Wynand asks: “Howard, have you ever been in love?” Roark replies: “I still am.” Rand, of course, would maintain that this is a reference to Dominique, but the ambiguity is unmistakable. There’s another scene in which the three are talking, and Dominique asks Roark: “You love him very much?” Roark answers in the affirmative. Wynand, fearing her reaction to his deepening bond with Roark, interjects: “Don’t resent my obsession.”

         A BD/SM flavor occasionally spices up scenes between the two men. When Wynand appears to taunt Roark, the latter tells Wynand that he has a secret desire to slap his friend’s face. Wynand cheekily retorts: “Why don’t you?” In another scene, we read: “‘I don’t know anyone on earth I’d rather order around than Mr. Roark,’ said Wynand gaily.” Roark responds: “I don’t mind taking orders. Not from a man as capable as Gail.” The depth of commitment between Roark and Wynand is underscored when they’re on the deck of Wynand’s yacht and Roark says: “Gail, if this boat were sinking, I’d give my life to save you.”

         Former classmate Peter Keating gets a contract for a major government housing project but cannot work it out technically; Roark agrees to design the project and allow Keating to put his name to it and get all the money on the condition that the building will be constructed exactly as he designs it. Keating agrees to the terms but is unable to prevent changes from being made, at which point Roark sees fit to dynamite the Cortlandt building. This brings public wrath down on his head, but Wynand holds out for Roark and uses the Banner to defend his friend.

         When the embattled Wynand visits Roark, the intimacy of their relationship is quickly revived when Roark volunteers: “I’ll run you a hot bath.” But Roark’s support is not enough;  Wynand succumbs to the public persecution. As the Banner crumbles, so does he. Wynand gives in to pressure from his remaining employees and allows the paper to reverse its stand and condemn Roark for his deed. A terrible depression sets in as Wynand realizes that his power over his readers was illusory; he was really their slave. This knowledge is exacerbated by the realization that he has sold out the man he loves. He cannot face Roark and refuses to see him or accept his calls.

         Roark writes a letter that’s redolent of the disappointed lover: “Gail … if this will help you I want to say that I’m repeating, now, everything I’ve ever said to you. Nothing has changed for me. You’re still what you were. I’m not saying that I forgive you, because there can be no such question between us. But if you can’t forgive yourself, will you let me do it? Let me say that it doesn’t matter. … Come back. There will be another chance.” Wynand returns the letter without opening it.

         Dominique engineers what she calls her own “Cortlandt explosion.” She spends the night at Roark’s place, then calls the police to falsely report that she’s lost a ring there. Newspapers, including the Banner, inform the world that publisher Gail Wynand’s wife is an adulteress. Wynand divorces Dominique.

         When Roark is brought to trial, he acts as his own attorney, and proves his client to be no fool. He calls only one witness—himself—and his testimony is also his summation. It is mostly a recitation of Rand’s individualist philosophy. He informs the jury that he did indeed dynamite Cortlandt Homes. He designed Cortlandt on the condition that it be built precisely according to plan, and he wasn’t paid for it. He believed his only recourse was to destroy the building.

         The jury finds him not guilty. After his acquittal, “The first movement of Roark’s head was not to look at the city in the window, at the judge or at Dominique. He looked at Wynand.” But: “Wynand turned sharply and walked out. He was the first man to leave the courtroom.”

Ayn Rand and LGBT Equality

For all the homoerotic undercurrents in her work, Rand had nothing but disdain for same-sex sexuality in public pronouncements. Of course, given her libertarian philosophy, she toed the line on the importance of keeping the government out of the bedroom. After a public lecture in 1971, she answered a question about homosexuality by saying that her belief in limited government and individual freedom led her to favor the repeal of all anti-sodomy laws—a relatively open-minded position at that time. However, she continued, homosexuality “involves psychological flaws, corruptions, errors, or unfortunate premises. Therefore, I regard it as immoral. If you want my sincere opinion, it’s disgusting.”

         In 1983, a year after Rand’s death, her ex-disciple Nathaniel Branden, who had previously expressed anti-gay views, strongly repudiated them. He said his former mentor had been “absolutely and totally ignorant” on this topic and derided her anti-gay views “as calamitous, as wrong, as reckless, as irresponsible, and as cruel, and as one which I know has hurt too many people who … looked up to her.”

         Rand’s views on homosexuality, and the efforts of her successors and followers to break free of them, are the subject of a 2003 book titled Ayn Rand, Homosexuality, and Human Liberation, by Chris Matthew Sciabarra, the openly gay editor of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies and author of Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. In his introduction, Sciabarra acknowledges the special appeal of her iconoclasm to “people who have traditionally felt oppressed by various religious traditions and social taboos,” including the LGBT community. In a review of Sciabarra’s monograph, Kurt Keefner notes that “Rand’s influence has been surprisingly broad” in that community. In a similar vein, Lisa Duggan writes in Mean Girl that Rand’s “rages against the strictures of family, church and state appeal to many lgbtq readers.”

         What remains is the problem of reconciling Rand’s professed disgust for homosexuality with her apparent fascination with it in The Fountainhead. Let’s start with the premise that Rand herself was powerfully attracted to men. When entering into the minds of some of her male characters, she may have unconsciously written her own attraction to men into their psyches, finding this a more natural writing task than describing an attraction to women.

         It is also possible, notwithstanding her official disgust, that Rand found a physical relationship between two men to be a turn-on. This could be analogous to straight men’s fascination with lesbian sex. In 2015, the website Pornhub, a site with over 115 million daily views, published a study showing that a third of the views of gay male porn are by women. Perhaps what Rand found “disgusting” was not sex between men but instead her own fascination with it. For someone like Rand who worshiped all that was masculine, including the male physique, while dismissing traditionally feminine qualities, the fantasy of male-on-male action may have been irresistible.

         Perhaps the most profound reason for the gay subtext was Rand’s highly intellectualized view of romantic love as a form of honoring or respecting another person with whom one has an almost spiritual bond. Note that the partners’ gender does not enter into this construct. Roark was Rand’s ideal man. Wynand was a flawed man with a potential for greatness. It is understandable that Roark admired Wynand and even more so that Wynand worshiped Roark. That they fell in love was very much in the cards given the author’s position on the legitimate basis for romantic love.