First Gay President

[MG_Grievous]

I vote for RP.

[RP-in-Nebraska]

I'm ineligible.......I'm not gay.......not that there's anything wrong with that.

[MG_Grievous]

Thread failure.

[lovekc]

Super Gay AL? By Executive Order he could officially change the flag colors to pink, cream, and aqua.

[wrestlefan19]

Super Gay AL? By Executive Order he could officially change the flag colors to pink, cream, and aqua.

wouldn't that be thuper!

[Tom Araya]

James Buchanan & Abe Lincoln were probably gay. . .

[oldtimer]

James Buchanan & Abe Lincoln were probably gay. . .

How can a Historian use the word "probably"?

I thought James Buchanan was so Fat they had to bring in a bigger bathtub at the white house. I have not seen to many fat gay men!

And, Abe.................He was a "War Monger" (I probably misspelled that).......gay men aren't "war mongers".......Are they RP?

http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e291/oldtimer1/Animated/queer_flag_e0.gif

http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e291/oldtimer1/Animated/amprideman2_e0.gif

[RP-in-Nebraska]

What would lead any one to believe that Lincoln was gay? - aside from the fact that he probably had the ugliest first lady ever and perhaps she was mistaken for a man.

[Tom Araya]

From The Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 15, 1999 :

Buchanan, gay? Who’d have thought?

Anyone who bothered to look into his living arrangements, says James W. Loewen, an adjunct professor of sociology at Catholic University. Of course, in his new book, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong (The New Press), Mr. Loewen is speaking of the first Buchanan with Presidential politics in his blood, James.

Mr. Loewen, author of the best-selling Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (New Press, 1995), sets out in his new, self-described “rant” to dispel the myths that befog the American landscape. In a chapter titled “You’re Here to See the House,” he recalls asking a tour guide at Wheatland, Buchanan’s mansion near Lancaster, Pa., whether the 15th President was gay. “He most definitely was not,” came the outraged reply.

“Most likely was,” insists Mr. Loewen. Buchanan’s long-time living companion, William Rufus King, was referred to by critics as his “better half,” ‘’his wife,” and “Aunt Fancy.” Around Washington, the pair were known as the “Siamese twins,” slang at the time for gays and lesbians. And when King was appointed envoy to France, in 1844, Buchanan lamented to a friend that “I have gone wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any of them.”

The relationship may have been more than romantic. Mr. Loewen speculates that Buchanan, a native of a fiercely anti-slavery section of Pennsylvania, developed pro-slavery views out of sympathy with King, who served as a Democratic Senator from Alabama.

“It’s important to know that some of our leaders have been gay,” says Mr. Loewen, explaining why he outed a man often counted among the 10 worst Presidents. “To know that gay people did things, good things and bad things. You can’t just claim the heroes.”

[Tom Araya]

From The Straight Dope:

Dear Cecil:

In the recent debate around gay marriage, the Log Cabin Republicans have come up. I understand their deal is that Abraham Lincoln was gay and grew up in a log cabin, so they align themselves with his sexuality through endorsing his upbringing. Whatever. My question is, how valid is the allegation of Honest Abe being gay? I realize that "we may never really know," but my impression is that he was a rowdy skirt chaser in his youth. What evidence do we have that he chased pants as well? Surely having a harridan for a wife isn't evidence enough? --Bill in Connecticut

Cecil replies:

You got me, partner. On the one hand, Abe has merely joined the long list of famous parties dubiously outed by gay activists, who are presumably prompted by the same impulse that leads African-Americans to claim Cleopatra was black. (She was Macedonian Greek, in case you're wondering.) As literary scholar Richard Kaye noted in the Village Voice's Queer Issue last year, other supposed gays in history include Jane Austen, Adolf Hitler, Eleanor Roosevelt, Robin Hood, T.S. Eliot, and Jesus. On the other hand, Lincoln slept with a man for years and seems to have had little use for women--you can see where people nowadays might jump to conclusions. Considering how the Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemings thing turned out, I wouldn't be too quick to say they're wrong.

The chief evidence, if such it be, of Lincoln's homosexual inclination is his relationship with Joshua Speed, a handsome 22-year-old shopkeeper when the two men met in 1837. Abe, then a 28-year-old lawyer with bright prospects but poor cash flow, arrived in Springfield, Illinois, and asked about the price of bedding at Speed's general store. Learning that Lincoln was nearly broke, Speed invited him to share his bed upstairs. "The traveler inspected the bed and, looking into the merchant's sparkling blue eyes, agreed on the spot," Carol Lloyd wrote in Salon in 1999. "For the next four years the two men shared that bed along with their most private fears and desires."

Sure, Lloyd's retelling is tongue-in-cheek. While two young single guys in the same bed might seem pretty hot to us, the objective in pioneer days was usually just to stay warm. Nonetheless the intimacy of the two men's friendship suggests to some that there was more going on than frontier privation or fear of frostbite--and rabble-rousing gay activist Larry Kramer says he has proof, namely hitherto unknown letters and a diary kept by Speed. At a gay and lesbian conference in 1999 Kramer read from his unfinished book "The American People," quoting that diary: "He often kisses me when I tease him, often to shut me up . . . he would grab me up by his long arms and hug and hug," Speed purportedly wrote. "Yes, our Abe is like a schoolgirl." But Kramer won't submit his source material to scrutiny until the book's publication, so who knows if it'll wash. C.A. Tripp, a former Kinsey researcher and author of the milestone 1975 text The Homosexual Matrix, reportedly finished a book making similar claims shortly before his death in 2003, but there's no news on when we'll see it.

Anyhow. Five years have passed with no sign of Kramer's magnum opus, and the natives are getting restless. Historian Gabor Boritt calls Kramer's claims "almost certainly a hoax"; Lincoln scholar David Donald says they're "highly dubious." Kramer for his part says Donald is a "dried old heterosexual prune at Harvard." Meanwhile, others have been sifting the Lincoln coffee grounds for clues. Findings pro and con:

"Abraham Lincoln did not like women," writes psychobiographer Michael Burlingame. Certainly he wasn't comfortable around them, judging from remarks by contemporaries. Accounts of romantic encounters are few and often disputed. His marriage to Mary Todd, while perhaps not the nightmare some paint it as, was neither peaceful nor happy. Shortly after his assassination a story circulated that as a young man he'd fallen in love with one Ann Rutledge, whose untimely death left him inconsolable, but recent scholarship casts doubt on its veracity. Lincoln may have patronized prostitutes, but the most common such tale sounds suspiciously like a barroom joke--the woman asked for five dollars, but Lincoln had only three, and rather than owe her the rest, Honest Abe buttoned up his pants and left.

Abe's enemies accused him of plenty, but never a yen for men. Today we're all but sure J. Edgar Hoover was gay and that Jefferson sired children by a slave, but people suspected as much at the time. No comparable rumors swirled around Lincoln. It's not like folks in the 19th century didn't know what homosexuality was--Lincoln's predecessor, James Buchanan, the only bachelor president, roomed for years with an unmarried U.S. senator and took plenty of flak for it. We'll see if the Tripp and Kramer books can settle this matter--Lincoln's sexual orientation is one question DNA tests seem unlikely to resolve

[Tom Araya]

James Buchanan & Abe Lincoln were probably gay. . .

How can a Historian use the word "probably"?

I thought James Buchanan was so Fat they had to bring in a bigger bathtub at the white house. I have not seen to many fat gay men!

And, Abe.................He was a "War Monger" (I probably misspelled that).......gay men aren't "war mongers".......Are they RP?



Probably the only fair conclusion to draw is that they might have been gay and/or bi.

We may never know the definitive truth.

Sometimes history ain't black or white (shrugs).

And maybe someday, a person's sexuality won't matter. . .

[MG_Grievous]

Thread failure.

Oh snap!

[RP-in-Nebraska]

It seems more likely that the stories about Lincoln are fabricated in an attempt by a few dishonest liberals to discredit the values of one of the conservative movement's most admired heroes.

[Tom Araya]

It seems more likely that the stories about Lincoln are fabricated in an attempt by a few dishonest liberals to discredit the values of one of the conservative movement's most admired heroes.

I've read other items along this line. I think it likely he was bi-sexual. Not sure why this would discredit the great things Abe did for the country.

Other conservatives who don't necessarily like girls who were/are admired as heroes in some circles:

Congressman Steve Gunderson (R-WI)
Cato Institute Executive VP David Boaz
W. Scott Thompson (worked for Ford & Reagan)
State Rep Chuck Carpenter (R-OR)
Author Andrew Sullivan
J. Edgar Hoover
Ted Haggard

PS: While governor of California, Reagan allied himself with the Log Cabin Republicans & championed their causes. Hooray for smaller government that stays out of bedrooms.

[RP-in-Nebraska]

Abe's enemies accused him of plenty, but never a yen for men. Today we're all but sure J. Edgar Hoover was gay and that Jefferson sired children by a slave, but people suspected as much at the time. No comparable rumors swirled around Lincoln.

This here is the strongest evidence IMO that he was not gay.

I imagine that a gay politician in the mid 1800's would have a difficult time getting elected. If even his political enemies at the time didn't stoop to call him gay, why would anybody now?

I'm no expert on history, but I am aware of revisionist historians that stretch too far in an attempt to extrapolate new meaning from old information. The best account of what the truth was in 1860 is what was written and recorded in 1860. (Or any other year for that manner).

[Tom Araya]

Ah yes, but James Buchanan WAS elected just four years earlier, and his sexual proclivity was talked about quite a lot.

As for the start of the "rumour" that Abe was gay, that wasn't a liberal conspiracy. Look no further than the creation of the Log Cabin Republicans in 1960. . .

[oldtimer]

Log Cabin Republicans in 1960. . .

Is that a gay code word for something?

[RP-in-Nebraska]

As for the start of the "rumour" that Abe was gay, that wasn't a liberal conspiracy. Look no further than the creation of the Log Cabin Republicans in 1960. . .

Okay, my liberal comment may be wrong. I should have said that a special interest group started the rumor to promote their own cause.

[Tom Araya]

Log Cabin Republicans in 1960. . .

Is that a gay code word for something?

Kinda. It's the gay wing of the Republican Party (I know, a bit oxymoronic. . .).

[oxman]

The Iranian President says there are no gays in Iran......
I'm not sure if he means that it is forbidden...or that they are immediately killed...
8)

[oldtimer]

The Iranian President says there are no gays in Iran......
I'm not sure if he means that it is forbidden...or that they are immediately killed...
8)

Did you hear the laughter by the Columbia Students......I would like to find that on youtube.

[Jay]

Did you hear the laughter by the Columbia Students......I would like to find that on youtube.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c45_1190663693&p=1

[mconn]

The Iranian President says there are no gays in Iran......
I'm not sure if he means that it is forbidden...or that they are immediately killed...
8)


Both

[RP-in-Nebraska]

A gay couple that wed in Massachusetts can't get a divorce in Rhode Island because the state recognizes marriage as a union between a man and a woman only. Has the slippery slope effect begun?

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/12/ ... 18009.html (http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/12/07/ap4418009.html)