It appears legendary actress Sally Field merely intendedit to be a lighthearted joke, told to a reporter writing a celebrity magazine profile. But remarks by the Oscar winner about her youngest son, writer Sam Greisman, and his sexuality, are raising eyebrows.
Sam Reisman is an out gay man, and in 2023 he wrote about his coming out, his mother's influence and how his own experience influenced a scene in a television series Field starred in 20 years ago, Brothers & Sisters.
What Field quoted Reisman as "always saying" is that being an infant on the set of the 1989 hit Southern drama, Steel Magnolias, surrounded by an ensemble of strong women ā Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Darryl Hannah, Julia Roberts and Olympia Dukakis ā essentially turned him gay.
In describing a photo of herself and Reisman, she said her son "was 6 months old, I'm holding his head because I'm trying to save his ears because it was loud," Field told People in an Instagram post. "He was on the set all the time and my friends took care of him. Sam has always said that that's probably why he's gay."
She's not wrong about Reisman's claim. He shared the photo Field referenced in his own social media post in 2018, with the caption: "Me: nothing can MAKE you gay, youāre just born that way. Also literally me."
As writer Brenden Shucart wrote in The Advocate in 2015, scientists have been trying to answer the question of why people are gay for generations. And 11 years later we still really don't know.
Perhaps fueled by the discovery a decade ago that there is no "gay gene," anti-gay researchers have harped on the idea that no one is truly "born this way," as The Advocate reported in 2016. The truth, of course, is that thoy used "very unscientific methods in order to reach a set of predetermined conclusions."
But all that is irrelevant to Reisman''s personal experience, which is how this examination began. In his 2023 essay for People, he put it simply, in reflecting on his famous mother, Sally Field, and her influence on his life.
"My mom has given me permission to be messy, to struggle, to fight with her, to rage at her when I have no one else to yell at, given me permission to pick out all of her award show dresses, because... well, no explanation needed," he wrote. "She has taught me that life, like art, is about picking yourself up and dusting yourself off, like she has done countless times. And luckily for me, I know that when I fall she will be there to pick me up. Even when she's not there."
Last year, Reisman made his voice heard when an infamous anti-LGBTQ activist made headlines with an appeal of Obergefell v.. Hodges to the U.S. Supreme Court: Kim Davis asked for her sentence for refusing to provide a gay couple with a marriage license to be overturned, as Out reported. Reisman did not mince words in a post on X: "Not this hideous bitch again."
Ultimately, as The Advocate reported in November of last year, the justices declined to hear her case. Reisman was silent but, given it was Kim Davis, maybe saying nothing at all was the best response of all.
