Abe Lincoln, gay man?

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Not a new controversy -- the Straight Dope summed up where things stood earlier this year. But the Tripp biography referred to in that article is due for release and here's the first peek into the contents. Bring on the whirlwind!

(What is interesting to me is that Buchanan, Lincoln's predecessor in office, also has been claimed as gay by researchers and historians.)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 28 October 2004 02:56 (twenty years ago)

electric six to thread.

― andrew l. r. (allocryptic), Thursday, 28 October 2004 02:59 (twenty years ago)

http://www.nme.com/features/105074.htm

― andrew l. r. (allocryptic), Thursday, 28 October 2004 03:00 (twenty years ago)

What a waste of time.

― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 28 October 2004 03:08 (twenty years ago)

hence the term "log-cabin republican," correct?

― andrew l. r. (allocryptic), Thursday, 28 October 2004 03:09 (twenty years ago)

i think we need to stop using the word gay to describe any same gendered behaviour regardless of historical and social context...and i think we need to examine current gender and sexul sterotypes, as well.

ie it was normal for men to share beds, and lives in the west at that time and place, mostly b/c there werent a hell of a lot of women (nb johnathon ned katz''s book on this, whose title ive forggotten)

ie buchanan seemed kind of sissy like, but then any educated, interiror man of that time was viewed that way (he was also useless and a warmonger, we should concetrate on that.)

― anthony, Thursday, 28 October 2004 03:12 (twenty years ago)

ie it was normal for men to share beds, and lives in the west at that time and place, mostly b/c there werent a hell of a lot of women

Also because it was hella cold in the winter.

― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, 28 October 2004 03:14 (twenty years ago)

When's the Larry Kramer book out, though?

― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, 28 October 2004 03:17 (twenty years ago)

Ugh, that article goes on way to much about the dumb-ass Kinsey scale. It's just not that useful a metaphor.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 28 October 2004 05:26 (twenty years ago)

I'd be more apt to by the book if it were entitled "The Erotic misadventures of 'Gaybe' Lincoln"

― Remy (x Jeremy), Thursday, 28 October 2004 05:30 (twenty years ago)

i agree with anthony--saying such and such a historical figure was "gay" is to use an anachronism. it pretends the force of revelation but really, is usually a lot more complicated.

anyway i don't really see how uncovering aspects of lincoln's sexual activities would help us better understand those things for which lincoln is famous and important.

― amateur!!st, Thursday, 28 October 2004 05:44 (twenty years ago)

It's pretty crass latter-day sensationalism. Still, I wonder if Matthew Brady took any photos.

― Remy (x Jeremy), Thursday, 28 October 2004 05:45 (twenty years ago)

not just an anachronism, actually. as anthony writes it's a word that can obscure as much as it reveals--as in, obscure the actual specifics of someone's sexual activities and the historical context that would help to understand them. that is, if we thinking understanding them is even a worthwhile endeavor in this case. i'm not convinced.

― amateur!!st, Thursday, 28 October 2004 05:45 (twenty years ago)

remy doncha know brady didn't really take many of the photos for which he is famous anyway? apparently most were taken by a team of photographers working under him, and then he would sign his name. pretty standard practice at the time (probably there are studios where this is still standard), but worth noting.

― amateur!!st, Thursday, 28 October 2004 05:46 (twenty years ago)

No kidding! My fifth grade teacher used to talk about Brady incessently, and showed us a bunch of posed-corpse photos (whose veracity I can't confirm/deny) so to this day I've got a weird little knowledge-base about him, and he creeps into a number of conversations where he doesn't belong. I love any iconclasty abt. him, because it drives him out of my friggin' head, two decades after I had to study all about him in school.

― Remy (x Jeremy), Thursday, 28 October 2004 05:50 (twenty years ago)

It's worth noting that the first published use of the word "homosexual" (as a noun) was in 1869.

― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, 28 October 2004 05:51 (twenty years ago)

I.e., four years after Lincoln kicked it. Not a homo, end of story.

― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, 28 October 2004 05:54 (twenty years ago)

susan sontag addressed the moving-corpses-for-a-more-iconic-shot thing in one of her new yorker essays a year or two ago. it was interesting. apparently the manipulations aren't hard to spot. the famous photo of a "dead rebel sniper" actual snows a body posed next to a rifle that is *not* the rifle a sniper would use.

i can't imagine actually going into a trench and moving a bunch of smelly corpses around to get a better photo. now that's determination.

― amateur!!st, Thursday, 28 October 2004 05:56 (twenty years ago)

xpost

speaking of lincoln kicking it, i saw "birth of a nation" on the big screen a few weeks ago and was struck again by how amazing is t he scene of lincoln's assassination in that film. a beautiful and exciting stretch of cinema.

[necessary disclaimers about how the film is otherwise quite ideologically repugnant etc.]

― amateur!!st, Thursday, 28 October 2004 05:57 (twenty years ago)

Jaymc is correct, before the the term "homosexual" was medicalized in the late 19th century, homosexual was something you did, not something you were. Homosexuality (and the "sin", or the crime, of sodomy) lied in the act of sex, not in someone's identity. People could have homosexual encounters without them being labeled as homosexuals.

This of course doesn't mean Lincoln couldn't have preferred homosexual encounters to heterosexual ones...

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 28 October 2004 05:58 (twenty years ago)

It's weirdly affecting -- there are a number of pieces of brilliance in that film. I read a review once in which the writer talked about how the work (film, I think) was scattered bits of genius, "like einstein after a motorcycle accident" and I can't help but remember that quote whenver I think of Birth of A Nation.

― Remy (x Jeremy), Thursday, 28 October 2004 06:06 (twenty years ago)

BOAN: now *there's* a film where a very unsavory form of sexual panic is just bursting from the screen. what a fucked-up film. and yet it still has a strange and very disturbing sort of power to fuel fear and fantasy. (i can only imagine how real the black sexual predator "gus" seemed to audiences of 1915, even as we now --and many people in 1915 to be honest-- recognize him as a grotesque caricature.)

anyway i like my american political heroes like i like my rifles: celibate.

xpost

i don't think it's scattered bit of genius, i think it's through-and-through a quite amazing film, although that scene is a definite highlight. it is also a really disgusting bit of propaganda for race-hatred, and a falsification of american history.

― amateur!!st, Thursday, 28 October 2004 06:10 (twenty years ago)

another fun fact, the concept of heterosexual came first.
(can you provide qoutes wrt to the sontag essay, and the brady stuff, im writing an essay where it would prove useful.)

― anthony, Thursday, 28 October 2004 09:25 (twenty years ago)

I'm sorry - I'm being dense; what do you mean by "The concept of heterosexual came first"?

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Thursday, 28 October 2004 10:32 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, I find it kinda weird that someone could come up with an concept of "a heterosexual" without contrasting it to "a homosexual". Obviously, concepts of "sodomy" or "boy love" have existed for hundreds of years, but as I said, they referred to homosexual acts, not to identity. Also, "sodomy" often covered more than just gay sex, for example heterosexual butt sex and bestiality.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 28 October 2004 10:58 (twenty years ago)

i don't know about quotes, but i can try to find the cite so you can read the article itself.

― amateur!!st, Thursday, 28 October 2004 15:32 (twenty years ago)

maybe his gayness is what turned mary todd into such a lunatic. well, that and the dead babies.

― Emilymv (Emilymv), Thursday, 28 October 2004 15:38 (twenty years ago)

i am totally hamming (gaying?) up my halloween costume this year.

― JaXoN (JasonD), Thursday, 28 October 2004 15:54 (twenty years ago)

Anth is wrong -- the word "homosexual" predates "heterosexual" by a few years. And in the paper that first uses the term "heterosexual", it's frowned upon (but it compares "heterosexual" sex, which is all about pleasure, to "procreative" sex, which is all about baby making). Homosexual sex is, in that paper, portrayed as breaking the divine law, but heterosexual sex is a perversion of holy procreative sex, and thus worse than homosexuality.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 28 October 2004 16:07 (twenty years ago)

"well, that and the dead babies."

i will try to work this phrase into several conversations this week.

― amateur!!st, Thursday, 28 October 2004 16:11 (twenty years ago)

Homosexual sex is, in that paper, portrayed as breaking the divine law, but heterosexual sex is a perversion of holy procreative sex, and thus worse than homosexuality.

I heart sinning.

― Hank Tenbeer (kenan), Thursday, 28 October 2004 16:17 (twenty years ago)

maybe his gayness is what turned mary todd into such a lunatic. well, that and the dead babies.

I've read suggestions that Mary Todd Lincoln's were not inconsistent with tertiary syphilis. This doesn't prove anything about Lincoln's sexual preferences, but this wouldn't be the first case in which a man caught a VD from an extramarital partner and passed it on to his wife.

Mind you, seeing one's husband shot right in front of you would tend to unhinge most minds.

― j.lu (j.lu), Thursday, 28 October 2004 16:24 (twenty years ago)

Grr...."...Mary Todd Lincoln's symptoms in later years were not..."

― j.lu (j.lu), Thursday, 28 October 2004 16:24 (twenty years ago)

Oh, she was unhinged before that.

― Hank Tenbeer (kenan), Thursday, 28 October 2004 16:25 (twenty years ago)

Mind you, seeing one's husband shot right in front of you would tend to unhinge most minds.

Particularly if the shooter then threw dead gay babies at you.

― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 28 October 2004 16:25 (twenty years ago)

(Not that Booth did that, I'm just saying.)

― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 28 October 2004 16:26 (twenty years ago)

Sic semper deadbabyis.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 28 October 2004 16:27 (twenty years ago)

Death to dead babies? Overkill, I'd say.

― Hank Tenbeer (kenan), Thursday, 28 October 2004 16:28 (twenty years ago)

i thot it was heterosexual by a few months, though i might have read ned katz wrong.

― anthony, Thursday, 28 October 2004 20:54 (twenty years ago)

ten years pass...

so if you're ambitious but straight-mannish, maybe i can help out.

http://gaycitynews.nyc/larry-kramers-search-heart-history/

http://www.out.com/art-books/2015/3/26/larry-kramer-historical-outings-american-people

― the increasing costive borborygmi (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 26 March 2015 21:22 (ten years ago)

cut to the chase: Kramer's historical novel (part 1!) sez Lincoln and many other presidents, Hamilton, Lafayette et al were queer

― the increasing costive borborygmi (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 26 March 2015 21:28 (ten years ago)

is Buchanan in there

(the closet)

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 26 March 2015 21:36 (ten years ago)

too obvious maybe? Washington, tho.

― the increasing costive borborygmi (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 26 March 2015 21:40 (ten years ago)

in Burr, Vidal's narrator hints that Washington has a massive crush on Hamilton, and that the latter advanced because of his accepting the attentions of older men.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 26 March 2015 21:47 (ten years ago)

lol at this

Joshua Speed, the most important of Abe’s amours is copiously quoted and/ or paraphrased from documents Larry has examined: “From the first night we met I held him in my arms, each night for going on four years. And he held me in his arms even tighter. We were both big strapping young men and my big bed took quite a beating. If Billy came upon us, or Abner, in the middle of our occupations, they would throw a pillow at us. Oh how we laughed, all of us. Those were happy days. Abraham was twenty-eight. I was twenty-two.”

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, 26 March 2015 21:51 (ten years ago)

you have no romance in your heart

― the increasing costive borborygmi (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 26 March 2015 21:56 (ten years ago)

We were both big strapping young men and my big bed took quite a beating. If Billy came upon us, or Abner, in the middle of our occupations, they would throw a pillow at us. Oh how we laughed, all of us. Those were happy days.

I don't think I've read this Clickhole article

― the geographibebebe (unregistered), Friday, 27 March 2015 02:41 (ten years ago)

but I can tell it was written by the 'big jazz boy' person

― the geographibebebe (unregistered), Friday, 27 March 2015 02:41 (ten years ago)

http://www.yasminnair.net/content/larry-kramer-imitation-game-and-gay-obsession-exceptionalism

― Pic Verry (mattresslessness), Friday, 27 March 2015 03:06 (ten years ago)

that's a heck of a url

― call all destroyer, Friday, 27 March 2015 03:30 (ten years ago)

per the NYT review today, Franklin, Jackson, Pierce, Buchanan, Samuel Clemens, all gay

― the increasing costive borborygmi (Dr Morbius), Friday, 27 March 2015 17:25 (ten years ago)

Pierce was one of the cuter and more bibulous presidents.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 27 March 2015 17:50 (ten years ago)

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