section_path: Personal life
section_name: Personal life
paragraph_text: Personal life
  
  Booker regularly exercises and has been a vegetarian since 1992, when he was a student at Oxford University. He abstains from alcohol and "has no known vices or addictions (except books)". In 2014, Booker began practicing a vegan diet and has expressed his vegan ethical philosophy and advocacy for animals. As of June 2016, Booker worshiped at the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Newark.
  
  In 1992, Booker recounted in his column for The Stanford Daily a sexual encounter during his teenage years and the messages he received that sex was a game. The column described Booker's changed attitudes towards sexual relations and how "skewed attitudes" lead to rape. The Daily Caller and Fox News brought up the column during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings in September 2018.
  
  From 1998 to 2006, Booker lived in Brick Towers, a troubled housing complex in Newark's Central Ward. In November 2006, as one of the last remaining tenants in Brick Towers, Booker left his apartment for the top unit in a three-story rental on Hawthorne Avenue in Newark's South Ward, an area described as "a drug- and gang-plagued neighborhood of boarded-up houses and empty lots." Brick Towers has since been demolished, and a new mixed-income development was built there in 2010.
  
  Since 2013, Booker has lived in a townhouse he owns in the Lincoln Park section of Newark's Central Ward, also known as "the Coast" for its arts, jazz, and nightlife history.
  
  Booker speaks Spanish; he attended a Spanish immersion program in Ecuador.
  
  In 2020, Booker learned that he and entertainer RuPaul are cousins, after both appeared on the TV show Finding Your Roots.
  
  In November 2022, Booker wrote a letter of support and leniency for Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes to the federal judge before her sentencing hearing. In the letter, Booker said that Holmes "holds onto the hope that she can make contributions to the lives of others and that she can, despite mistakes, make the world a better place."
  
  Booker regularly exercises and has been a vegetarian since 1992, when he was a student at Oxford University. He abstains from alcohol and "has no known vices or addictions (except books)". In 2014, Booker began practicing a vegan diet and has expressed his vegan ethical philosophy and advocacy for animals. As of June 2016, Booker worshiped at the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Newark.
  
  In 1992, Booker recounted in his column for The Stanford Daily a sexual encounter during his teenage years and the messages he received that sex was a game. The column described Booker's changed attitudes towards sexual relations and how "skewed attitudes" lead to rape. The Daily Caller and Fox News brought up the column during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings in September 2018.
  
  From 1998 to 2006, Booker lived in Brick Towers, a troubled housing complex in Newark's Central Ward. In November 2006, as one of the last remaining tenants in Brick Towers, Booker left his apartment for the top unit in a three-story rental on Hawthorne Avenue in Newark's South Ward, an area described as "a drug- and gang-plagued neighborhood of boarded-up houses and empty lots." Brick Towers has since been demolished, and a new mixed-income development was built there in 2010.
  
  Since 2013, Booker has lived in a townhouse he owns in the Lincoln Park section of Newark's Central Ward, also known as "the Coast" for its arts, jazz, and nightlife history.
  
  Booker speaks Spanish; he attended a Spanish immersion program in Ecuador.
  
  In 2020, Booker learned that he and entertainer RuPaul are cousins, after both appeared on the TV show Finding Your Roots.
  
  In November 2022, Booker wrote a letter of support and leniency for Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes to the federal judge before her sentencing hearing. In the letter, Booker said that Holmes "holds onto the hope that she can make contributions to the lives of others and that she can, despite mistakes, make the world a better place."