How many years will it take for another Gay Man to become President?

Question

Firebrand Larry Kramer says he has the evidence to prove it. Lincoln scholars are holding their fire until they see it. Get ready for the second Civil War.



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By Carol Lloyd


May 3, 1999 | The 28-year-old traveler was tall, with rough hands, a chiseled jaw and unforgettable, deep-set, melancholy eyes. He arrived in town, his worldly possessions in two battered suitcases, and inquired at a general store about buying some bedding. But the price was far beyond his budget. The strikingly handsome 23-year-old merchant took pity on the man and invited him into his own bed, free of charge, which happened to be just upstairs. The traveler inspected the bed and, looking into the merchant's sparkling blue eyes, agreed on the spot. For the next four years the two men shared that bed along with their most private fears and desires.

If this sounds like the opening of a homoerotic dime-store novel whose subsequent scenes feature fiery loins and ecstatic eruptions, hold your panting. The year is 1837, the place Springfield, Ill., and the leading men none other than our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, and his lifelong friend Joshua Speed.

It is a story that historians have told and retold, puzzled over and reinterpreted, dismissed and decorated. Some describe Lincoln's acceptance of Joshua Speed's generous offer as terse and matter-of-fact; others as beaming and emotional. What none of them questions is that Lincoln and Speed's years of living together cemented a friendship unparalleled in its intimacy and tenderness in Lincoln's life. So far, all major historians have stopped short of intimating that Lincoln was ever involved in a romantic affair with a man -- in fact, they explicitly discourage such interpretations.

But Larry Kramer, the 62-year-old gay rights hell-raiser, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter ("Women in Love") and Pulitzer-nominated playwright ("The Normal Heart"), wants to change all that. In February, at a gay and lesbian conference in Madison, Wis., he read a portion of his unfinished book, "The American People" -- which, in the course of describing the history of gays in early America, avers that Lincoln and Speed were not merely bedfellows but lovers.

"There's no question in my mind he was a gay man and a totally gay man," Kramer declares. "It wasn't just a period, but something that went on his whole life."

Like the rumors that Thomas Jefferson had sired the children of his young slave Sally Hemings, questions about Speed and Lincoln's relationship have circulated for years. In "Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years" (1926), Carl Sandburg wrote that their relationship had "a streak of lavender and spots soft as May violets," which some have taken as a veiled reference to homosexuality. In 1995, just after Bob Dole rejected campaign contributions from the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay GOP group, Log Cabin member W. Scott Thompson was quoted in the New York Times as saying that gays should feel welcome in the party, "given that the founder was gay." Novelist Paul Russell, author of "The Gay 100," a ranking of the world's most important gay figures, also investigated the rumors but chose not to include Lincoln, feeling that the case was not strong enough, though he did include questionable figures like Shakespeare and Madonna. In an interview that will appear in a forthcoming anthology called "Sexual Writings by Gore Vidal," Gore Vidal told Kramer some years ago that during the research for the historical novel "Lincoln," Vidal too began to suspect that Lincoln was gay.

Like most of Lincoln's early private life, the story of his friendship with Speed is a murky one -- although not nearly as murky as Lincoln's early liaisons with women. After four years of living in intimate quarters, Speed announced plans to sell the store and return to his home in Kentucky, where his family owned a large plantation. Lincoln, who was notoriously awkward and shy around women, was at the time engaged to a vivacious, if temperamental, society girl named Mary Todd, but as the date of Speed's departure and the marriage approached, Lincoln cracked. He wanted to break the engagement by letter, but at Speed's entreaty, he went to Mary Todd and told her face to face he did not love her. Some argue that Lincoln had fallen in love with another woman. Soon after, Speed departed, leaving Lincoln mired in depression and guilt.

Seven months later Lincoln traveled to Speed's home in Kentucky, where he spent a month being nursed back to health. After that the two men corresponded affectionately for decades, chronicling their most personal internal conflicts -- including their abject fear of marriage, which they ominously refer to in their correspondence (always emphasized) as forebodings. Speed was the first to approach the altar successfully, an ordeal that Lincoln coached him through with tender but not altogether convincing letters of encouragement. It seemed that Speed was on the verge of a premarital meltdown similar to Lincoln's. "If you went through the ceremony calmly, or even with sufficient composure not to excite alarm in anyone present, you are safe, beyond question," Lincoln wrote just after the date of Speed's betrothal, "and in two or three months, to say the most, will be the happiest of men." Subsequent clandestine letters inquired whether Speed really was "happier or, if you think the term preferable, less miserable." Both men eventually married and had children; they remained close until they had a falling-out in 1855 over the issue of slavery.

Answer 1

15 more gone.....damn!!!

Answer 2

Anyone can copy and paste, but brevity is much more popular here.

These rumors about Lincoln have been around for at least a decade - hence the name, "Log Cabin Republicans." Nothing new here. Yawn. No Civil War, and certainly, no big upheval that will result in some new civil rights for gays or lesbians.

Answer 3

Whether he was gay or not may explain the overwhelming depression that he suffered from and his wife's extreme anxiety, but it doesn't change the type of president that he became. He still was the leader of a country torn apart, still the commander in chief during one of the bloodiest wars of our countries history. He still was the president that signed the Emmancipation Proclamation. How does this change history?

Answer 4

Sorry, but it's late and I only read your question. Maybe a gay man will be elected after a woman and a black person and a hispanic are elected.

Answer 5

I don't like the word gay to describe a bunch of queers, gay people are happy how can a queer be happy since they are the outcasts of society, but to answer your question , I would think it is plain that Mr,Lincoln was a queer after all if you read between the lines of so many of his writings etc, if you walk like a duck . you sound like a duck , you look like a duck , then dammit you must be a duck,

Answer 6

One word: WHAT?!?!