Further Proof That Lln Was Gay | The New Yorker

Contents:

• WERE LEWIS AND CLARK GAY?
• WAS LLN GAY?
• WAS ABRAHAM LLN OUR FIRST GAY PRINT?
• FURTHER PROOF THAT LLN WAS GAY
• A FAY HISTORY PROVIS MORE EVINCE THAT LLN WAS GAY
• WAS ABRAHAM LLN GAY?
• WAS ABRAHAM LLN GAY?
• HOW GAY IS LLN?
• WERE LLN AND NIXON GAY? THE ‘HISTORY’ BOOK THAT IS DIVIDG AMERI

WERE LEWIS AND CLARK GAY?

But if you don’t thk ’s absurd for one (historilly important) man to sire another, ’s jt a very tired anti-gay joke. Last summer, We Proceed On, the scholarly journal of the Lewis and Clark Trail Herage Foundatn me unr signifint fire after historian and archivist William Benemann published two says that speculated on the homo-erotic nature of the bond between the two Mr. Many letter wrers cried the cln, llg gay “propaganda” and an “abomatn, ” — that “disparaged” our “Amerin hero” by suggtg anythg other than heterosexualy when speakg of the two men: “I am takg this opportuny to exprs my outrage and disappotment about the article that bmirched the good character of Captas Lewis and Clark.

Tripp is not the first to argue that Lln was homosexual -- earlier wrers have parsed his iendship wh Joshua Speed, the young store owner he lived wh after movg to Sprgfield, Ill. He is, most famoly, the thor of "The Homosexual Matrix.

WAS LLN GAY?

" Published 1975, was a document of gay liberatn.

Sce the other print sometim thought to have been gay is the wretched Jam Buchanan, what gay activist wouldn't want to tra up to Lln?

WAS ABRAHAM LLN OUR FIRST GAY PRINT?

Sce Ksey nclud that early maturg boys tend to bee wty masturbators wh lots of homosexual experience, Tripp nclus the same of Lln.

One wonrs: What do mean to be homosexual? Tripp argu that a cultural nocence -- the word "homosexual" had not yet been ed -- allowed acts of physil closens between men that had no eper meang, as well as acts that did but uld pe scty.

"A versn of this article appears prt on, Sectn 7, Page 13 of the Natnal edn wh the headle: Was Lln Gay?. Was Abraham Lln Our First Gay Print? It's a persistent mor, and one that has some basis historil fact: was Abraham Lln gay?

FURTHER PROOF THAT LLN WAS GAY

Scholars have bated whether Lln suffered om a host of physil ailments, whether or not he was clilly prsed, and — perhaps most trigugly to some — if Abraham Lln was gay.

Was Abraham Lln Gay? An accatn of this sort uld even lead to ser prison time, so ’s no surprise that the historil rerd om the 19th century is sparse openly gay public figur.

Ecce Homo?

A FAY HISTORY PROVIS MORE EVINCE THAT LLN WAS GAY

He also wrote this b of ic verse, which turns on – of all thgs – gay marriage:.

For many years, a kd of gay-revisnist history has been wrten, which this or that historil figure is held up to tense scholarly scty and clared by one activist historian or another to have been gay, transgenred, or bisexual.

WAS ABRAHAM LLN GAY?

It’s evable that virtually all of the proment homosexuals of the Victorian Age would go to extreme lengths to keep their affairs as private as possible, and this mak hont scholarship on the subject challengg at bt. Today, an vatn om one man to another to live and sleep together would almost evably be assumed to be homosexual nature.

So was Abraham Lln gay? From the mixed rerds we do have, an distct picture n be drawn that pats the 16th print as anythg om a eply closeted homosexual to an enthiastic heterosexual.

WAS ABRAHAM LLN GAY?

After readg about the evince about whether or not Abraham Lln was gay, vis our post on the fotten story of the Lln assassatn and tertg facts about Lln you’ve probably never heard before. "Many historians are quick to say that men shared beds due to a bed shortage and that surely Lln, the savr of the Unn, uld not have been gay. The studied impulse to make Lln absolutely heterosexual reflects a discernible societal disfort wh the plexi of human sexualy and sexual orientatn, as well as eply embedd streaks of homophobia.

As a sexologist, I pos that Lln was a Ksey 4 -- homosexual wh more than cintal oppose-sex ntact.

"But I am puzzled about one thg: William Herndon has not mentned or wrten anythg that would dite that Lln was gay. William Herndon was my great-great-uncle, and he was gay, and he was Lln's lover. I believe that Lln was gay, and I see that as simply the sweet icg on the ke of the life story of our greatt print.

HOW GAY IS LLN?

One fan said: “I loved the movie and s actors are still very handsome but I still thk that the actors are posg as gay but they are not. Was Abraham Lln gay?

J Homosex. Scholars and historians are bld to Lln's same-sex clatns part bee of a personal aversn to male homosexualy, but more importantly bee they fail to perceive the vast differenc between the sexual culture of antebellum Ameri and that of our own time, pecially regard to male-male physil and emotnal timacy.

Rponse to Michael Fergon's "Was Abraham Lln Gay? Lln, ” he imag a sensive story about two men who were the bt of iends and maybe Lln was gay or bisexual has never been substantiated, and the evince is weak. When nsirg the ntroversial matter of whether Abraham Lln was “gay, ” that send qutn is the right one to ask.

WERE LLN AND NIXON GAY? THE ‘HISTORY’ BOOK THAT IS DIVIDG AMERI

But was this relatnship romantic and/or sexual, or somethg more monplace an age that was blsed wh a more diverse range of male relatnships than our morn, hypersensive, “no homo” era?

Men Lln’s time often shared beds for enomic reasons, jt as they share apartments now, and homosocial exprsns of affectn were pletely acceptable, even enuraged. Still, readg the print’s letters and diari, one—a gay one like me, anyway—n’t help but note, well, overton.

And spe what provotr-wh-a-book-to-sell Larry Kramer would have you believe—he was partly rponsible for sparkg the scholarly tert Lln’s boudoir, thanks to a 1999 lecture which he claimed the Amerin hero as a kd of gay forefather—textual overton are all we have to go on. Of urse, readg morn ncepts like “queeny” and even “gay” to the past is dangero.