Time Magazine Article: Was Abraham Lincoln Gay?

Doesn't matter much to me what Honest Abe did in his bedroom. But wouldn't it be nice if people started realizing that a many of our countries mainstream hero's came from diverse backgrounds.

here's some of the article (looking at a new book release):

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1015858,00.html

In The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln (Free Press; 295 pages) sex researcher C.A. Tripp argues that the four years Lincoln slept in the same bed with his friend Joshua Speed when the two lived in Springfield, Ill., as bachelors far surpassed what was common or necessary. Tripp also cites accounts from Washington wags of that period who noted that the 16th President regularly shared a bed with David Derickson, one of his guards, whenever his wife Mary Todd was out of town. Tripp throws in a handful of other bunkmates, Lincoln's bawdy sense of humor and his stormy relationship with his wife to argue that the Lincoln bedroom was the site of behavior surprising from the founder of a party that wants to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. (Have the Log Cabin Republicans known this all along?)

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1015858,00.html

I mean, noone except homophobe assholes wants Hitler to be gay. Gay people don't need that BS.

or something like that was on C-SPAN at a convention trying to debunk this book. I don't know if Abe was gay or not and it doesn't matter. Why do people get their undies in a bunch just by suggesting it is a possibility?

...a homosexual...why? God only knows what makes someone care about another person's sexuality...Kind of creeps me out.

about Lincoln's sexuality, but I do wonder when people put a 21st century spin on 19th century habits. Lincoln stayed with Speed for four years because he was too poor to afford his own lodging. Speed was known to frequent 'fancy women', and there is a story I've read about how he even recommended one to Lincoln, who went and was honest enough to tell the lady he didn't have enough money to pay her, whereupon, supposedly, she let him have "IT" on credit. Speed later married and had a family.

In the 19th century, it wasn't unusual for people of the same sex to share beds. It was also common for members of the same sex to have ardent friendships, even saying they loved one another-but it is believed it never went beyond the friendship stage. Homosexuality was not necessarily a reason to freak out-apparently Whitman got into trouble only when he was teaching school and was suspected of becoming too friendly with some of his students. He stopped teaching school, but wasn't run out of Long Island.

I guess after you make Bush you man of the year, you don't really have to write real news.

about Victor Ashe.}(

Lincoln was a great president, maybe the greatest and this is what Time magazine concentrates on? I guess they are still in the afterglow of exalting Bush, so can't do any negative stories on him, no sir.

...I like the idea of humanizing our hero's, that's how we hold closest to who they really are. Jesus for example has been completely transformed into a golden calf by Christians, hiding what and who he really was.

Like it MATTERS. Have these people nothing better to do?

Review says it best:

"There were many Lincolns: the joker, the pol, the logician, the skeptical theologian. But the man of sorrows may be the most important. ''The president has a curious vein of sentiment running through his thought which is his most valuable mental attribute,'' as his secretary of state, William Seward, said. Desiring what he could not consistently have did not make him grieve -- what Virgil called the tears of things did that -- but it may have deepened his grief.

Towering above these Lincolns is the man who saw liberty and equality as facets of the same thing, and who maintained his (he called it his and the founders') vision in the face of Northern confusion and Southern fury. This is the Lincoln that matters. The rest is biography."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/09/books/review/09BROOKHE.html?pagewanted=2&oref=login

People have claimed all sorts of things about Lincoln, that he was a communist, that he was a fascist, that he was a racist, that he was completely unbiased.

"The man who saw liberty and equality as facets of the same thing..." sums up, for me at least, all that is important.

will the homophobes want to revoke the Emancipation Proclamation ?

After all, everything he done would suddenly, retrospectively have become evil.

not that it's worth anything anyway.

:)

I don't care what Honest Abe did even if he was giving blow-jobs in the Oval Office. Time needs to do some articles on what is going on in the White House NOW.

Thomas Walkom – The Toronto Star

The debate over whether George W. Bush is a moron continues to sputter. Morons are outraged at being lumped in with the U.S. president. Americans, meanwhile, are mildly amused that it has taken Canadians so long to discover the obvious.

The controversy exploded last week when Francoise Ducros, an adviser to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, was overheard at a NATO meeting in Prague saying, "What a moron," apparently in relation to Bush.

Morons say this is an outlandish slur. "We're nice people," explained one. "We don't threaten other countries or use the courts to steal elections. George W. Bush may be a dangerous lunatic. But he's no moron."

Chrétien seems to agree. "He's not a moron at all," the Prime Minister told reporters on Thursday, referring to Bush.

Still, the opposition parties are not content. The Canadian Alliance argues that if Bush discovers he is a moron, this could affect Canada-U.S. relations.

Chrétien, however, says there is nothing to worry about. Bush, he said, doesn't read Canadian newspapers

According to the International Dictionary of Medicine and Biology, most morons are "educable and do not require institutionalization but need some supervision in working at some simple job by which they can become self-sustaining members of society."

Some have argued that this definition fits Bush to a tee. In most matters, they note, he is carefully supervised by Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfield and Attorney-General John Ashcroft.

Cheney and Rumsfield run Bush's wars while Ashcroft stifles domestic opposition. At home in the White House, first lady Laura Bush is charged with watching over the president.

"Since the president's inauguration, he's only been left unsupervised once — to watch a football game on television," recalled one expert. "And look what happened. He fell off the couch, choked on a pretzel and hurt his head."

While the Canadian media have gone gaga over the Bush-is-moron story, Americans seem to have taken it in their stride. "Once again, Canadians have discovered the obvious," editorialized the Wall Street Journal dismissively. "Duh, Canada" riposted the New York Post.

In a lengthy analysis, the New York Times pointed out that Americans have long made a practice of electing dead people to the Senate and morons to the presidency.

"This kind of flexibility is what makes U.S. democracy so vital," the Times went on. "Why should the Senate be denied the wisdom of those who have passed on? Why should the presidency be the preserve of the mentally capable?"

Recent polls suggest that most Americans agree. A stunning 67 per cent of respondents think that Bush is a moron compared with the next largest category, 28 per cent, who believe him to be a space alien.

Yet neither has affected his 82 per cent approval rating.

"He may be a moron," explained one respondent interviewed by pollsters. "But he's our moron. He speaks our language."

Meanwhile, in Canadian journalistic circles, an ethical debate rages over whether the original moron comment should have been printed at all.

Ducros apparently made the crack in private conversation to one journalist (who did not publicize it) but was overheard by another, the National Post's Bob Fife, who did.

Chrétien says that Ducros was actually defending Bush.

"Fife overheard the words accurately," said one senior federal source," but he didn't hear the punctuation.

"Francie didn't say `What a moron!' She said 'What? A moron?' and then stormed out. She was reacting because the reporters were referring to Bush as a moron and she couldn't bear the insult to such a dear friend of Canada."

Still others say that Fife missed the possessive.

"We were all sitting around the briefing room waiting to find out if Uzbekistan would be accepted as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization," said one scribe. "Francie was doing the crossword in the International Herald Tribune and the clue for six across was a four-letter word for moron beginning with B.

"English isn't Francie's first language, so she asked everyone, What's a moron? Bob just missed the apostrophe s."

However, to some media experts, the actual words said don't matter. For a journalist to report something he heard, they say, could destroy the entire edifice of source-based journalism.

"If political aides think they'll be identified when they badmouth their bosses' opponents anonymously, they'll stop doing it," said one.

"Then what would happen? The media would have no stories."

Still others defended Fife's actions.

"The moron story was a windfall for our members," said an official with the Canadian Association of Columnists.

"Bush as moron? It doesn't get any better. Every two-bit columnist in the country is taking advantage of this baby. They'll all be able to go home early."

http://www.thestar.ca/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1035774797523&call_page=TS_News&call_pageid=968332188492&call_pagepath=News/News

Hopefully the public discussion of Lincoln's sexuality will lead tangentially toward discussion of Lewis's.

All the signs are there that he was in love with Clark.

thinks is newsworthy.

but there is nothing wrong with a good discussion about this possibily.

asked earlier and I was curious.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log_Cabin_Republicans

History

The name of the organization is a reference to the first Republican President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, who was born in a log cabin. The organization features a portrait of Lincoln on its website and other publicity material. The name has been criticized by other gay and lesbian rights groups because it does not specifically identify the organization as being for gay men and lesbians.

Log Cabin was founded in 1978 in California, as a rallying point for Republicans opposed to the Briggs Initiative, the first attempt to restrict gay and lesbian rights through a ballot measure. The Initiative, which was defeated, would have prevented gay men and lesbians from being public school teachers in California. Among those Republicans who opposed the Initiative was former Governor Ronald Reagan, later President......

the people should know (they are!)