A Republin hero, but was Abe Lln gay? | World news | The Guardian

Contents:

• A FAY HISTORY PROVIS MORE EVINCE THAT LLN WAS GAY
• BUT WERE THEY GAY? THE MYSTERY OF SAME-SEX LOVE THE 19TH CENTURY
• FURTHER PROOF THAT LLN WAS GAY
• A REPUBLIN HERO, BUT WAS ABE LLN GAY?
• WAS LLN GAY?
• WAS ABRAHAM LLN OUR FIRST GAY PRINT?
• THE MEN BEHD THE MAN: ABRAHAM LLN’S GAY LOVERS
• WAS ABRAHAM LLN GAY?
• PETE BUTTIGIEG SAYS THERE HAVE PROBABLY BEEN GAY PRINTS. HERE'S WHY THAT THEORY IS COMPLITED
• HOW GAY IS LLN?

A FAY HISTORY PROVIS MORE EVINCE THAT LLN WAS GAY

Tripp's rearch and disputed his Tripp was the thor of "The Homosexual Matrix, " a 1975 book that disputed the Frdian notn of homosexualy as a personaly disorr.

Tripp matas that other wrers, cludg Ida Tarbell and Margaret Leech, also found evince of Lln's homosexualy but shied away om fg as such or omted ccial Tripp c Lln's extreme privacy and acunts by those who knew him well. She said that Lln's homosexualy would expla his temptuo relatnship wh Mary Todd, and "some of her agoni and anxieti over their relatnship.

BUT WERE THEY GAY? THE MYSTERY OF SAME-SEX LOVE THE 19TH CENTURY

Baker qutn of Lln's sexualy is plited by the fact that the word homosexual did not fd s way to prt English until 1892 and that "gayns" is very much a morn Baker said the foc of 19th-century moral opprobrium was masturbatn, not homosexualy. "A versn of this article appears prt on, Sectn E, Page 1 of the Natnal edn wh the headle: Fdg Homosexual Threads Lln's Legend.

"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.

" By 1911, there was enough awarens of homosexualy that when Fields pulled together a posthumo volume of Jewett's letters, edor Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe urged her to censor out the pet nam.

FURTHER PROOF THAT LLN WAS GAY

Tripp produc evince that one of Ameri's greatt Prints had a long-term relatnship wh a youthful iend, Joshua Speed, and shared his bed wh David Derickson, pta of his, a former rearcher for sex scientist Aled Ksey and an fluential gay wrer, clus asis by many of Lln's close iends.

However, crics say that the pneer days men sleepg together rough circumstanc was not Tripp has disvered letters between Lln and Speed which supposedly betray a ep Tripp's book really breaks new ground s exhstive portrayal of many of Lln's possible gay lovers, cludg one man who said Lln's thighs 'were as perfect as a human beg uld be'. 'Make no mistake - Abe Lln was gay, ' said Profsor Stt Thompson, om the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at David Donald, a Harvard profsor and rpected Lln bgrapher, has disputed Tripp's fdgs his own book, We Are Lln Men, published last year, and says there is no five proof of Lln havg affairs wh any men. 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.

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? Sce Ksey nclud that early maturg boys tend to bee wty masturbators wh lots of homosexual experience, Tripp nclus the same of Lln. 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 REPUBLIN HERO, BUT WAS ABE LLN 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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

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. The first reference to him possibly beg “homosexual” me om notable Lln expert Carl Sandburg his 1926 bgraphy, Abraham Lln: The War Years. Those who attempt to refute Lln’s possible “homosexualy” ually foc on one particular cint — of the many — that supports the theory: his relatnship wh Speed.

WAS LLN GAY?

In his attempts to refute Lln’s possible homosexualy, Donald claims his book “Lln’s Men” (2004) that while Speed and Lln slept together for four years the same bed, they both were romancg women durg two of those years.

Doris Kearns Goodw, an terview on C-SPAN about her 2006 Lln bgraphy “Team of Rivals: The Polil Geni of Abraham Lln, ” said, “Homosexuals didn’t exist before the word was ed 1868 … ” She most likely meant the term didn’t exist, but this clearly monstrat a lack of sensivy by non-gay historians. 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.

WAS ABRAHAM LLN OUR FIRST GAY PRINT?

Some of the most popular theori about whether there has ever been a gay print surround Print Jam Buchanan, one-term print om 1857-1861.

“It might be more accurate to say that there may have been prints the past who sired men, or had sexual experienc wh men… they wouldn’t have necsarily intified as gay a 21st century sense. For Buttigieg to say that another print may have been gay the way that ’s unrstood the 21st century, “’s jt farcil, ” Balcerski says.

Even if the two had some sort of attractn to other men, they wouldn’t have intified as gay bee that notn of livg as an out gay man didn’t exist, both historians say. “I thk that there were always gray areas and nuanc and plenty of possibili for men the late 19th and 20th century to have sex wh other men and not nsir themselv gay, ” Clev says. “I fd that the early 19th century, ironilly, almost prents an era where the same kds of pathologi [agast gay men] that will be prent all the way through the pre-Stonewall era aren’t que place yet.

THE MEN BEHD THE MAN: ABRAHAM LLN’S GAY LOVERS

Balcerski says ’s important to chronicle gay history, but he says popular theori about the lik of Buchanan and Lln are too simplistic.

“As we bee more and more terted broang the tt, so to speak, of LGBT history, what we fd is we’ve taken people, who for one reason or another, don’t f to a normative pattern of heterosexual marriage and we basilly put this label on them as gay, ” Balcerski says. “I asked where I would get the paper to wre this on, the gui answered (oftentim would be Marie Corelli) that I uld get om old books and gaye me a list of books that Lln ed at that perd of his life. 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. 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. If you’ve read your Fouult, you know that homosexualy—which is to say, a total inty predited on same-sex attractn as opposed to discrete sex acts—was only vented as a possibily wh the rise of psychoanalysis and the medil and legal tablishments’ creasg tert “perversn” the late 19th century.

WAS ABRAHAM LLN GAY?

While historians will probably never terme for sure if Lln nsummated his relatnships wh Speed or other men close to him, the new film provis a perfectly reasonable space for imagg what a “gay” Lln might look like.

“My Old Kentucky Homo: Abraham Lln, Larry Kramer, and the Polics of Queer Memory, ” Charl E Morris III,  Queerg Public Addrs: Sexuali Amerin Historil Disurse.

At about that time I met Tripp, whose posthumo The Intimate World of Abraham Lln has at last been published by Free the Ksey and I had mon so long ago was the knowledge that homosexual and heterosexual behavr are natural to all mammals, and that what differs om dividual to dividual is the balance between the two plementary but not necsarily nflicted driv.

PETE BUTTIGIEG SAYS THERE HAVE PROBABLY BEEN GAY PRINTS. HERE'S WHY THAT THEORY IS COMPLITED

But not Jonathan Ned Katz; 2001 this relentls scholar wrote a study of their “love affair” as an example of sex between men before the ventn of homosexualy; a word and generic ncept that dat back only to the late 19th century, while “heterosexualy, ” prevly popularly known as “jt sex, ” is now the name for a new admirable team whose first appearance public prt was a 1924 edn of, I fear, the New York Tim. “Ksey’s figur on the pervasivens of the homosexual experienc of men dazzled the ever quisive Tripp, ” as historian Jean Baker wr her troductn to his study of Lln. One fdg that Tripp evaluatg Lln: Ksey’s rearch showed that those mal who entered puberty early were more apt to seek homosexual outlets if only bee girls were out of reach.

HOW GAY IS LLN?

Incintally, the one thg that the Ksey report, Tripp’s The Homosexual Matrix, and my The Cy and the Pillar had mon, asi om the unwele ndor about our human tate, was the hysteria we created at The New York Tim. We exame the powerful and never accsible rmatn that mak startlgly clear a great sufferg; we see this turn bee the source of power which mov this parched great spir to worldly greatns while matag his humany; and are forced to nclu that he uld never e to personally satisfyg terms wh the active homosexualy which he sacrificed to pnce and ambn on the thrhold of his reer.

For this se, any traed scholar who (like the prent wrer) is gay has a substantial advantage, the very same tuive feel that mastream analysts have for heterosexual is a paful qutn for most honorable, tolerant Amerins even to thk of posg.

Equally obv is the reason for the agonized ristance offered to the sight--not to the trsic relevance of the sexualy of a master spir, but to the anxieti that the issue evok, once so much as posed among men of our culture alg wh homosexualy--pecially perhaps homosexualy how to make so dac a claim upon perhaps our greatt print?