To steal another line from Lincoln: “As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.” The desire to find ourselves in the faces of history is only human, but in oversimplifying the past, we oversimplify ourselves. Larry Craig is attracted to men, so is Ted Haggard, but that hardly makes them worthy of being heroes.
To simply point out that they may have had some element of same-sex attraction is speculative and not something that really has any relevance. To try to ascribe that identity to historical people who had no conception of what being gay means in a modern context seems sort of futile. Tripp,and even that features a dissenting forward.įorget for a minute the question of whether we can answer the question of whether historical people like Lincoln were gay or not and consider the question of why we ought to? Science has done a pretty good job of proving that homosexuality is ingrained and genetic, but the gay identity is more than same-sex attraction it’s a modern political identity. The only scholarly work that seriously argues that Lincoln was gay is The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln by C. Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of Lincoln’s Melancholy, argues that Lincoln wasn’t gay by pointing to the nature of both frontier life, where sharing beds was common, and Victorian masculinity, which valued intimacy and florid language, especially in letter writing. So, is Lincoln gay? I’m no historian (though a definite history buff), but it seems to me, the real question is, “Can we know if Lincoln was gay?” The answer to that question has to be a definite “No.” There are simply too many problems for us to ever hope to get a definitive answer. Speed remained a lifelong friend, despite his support of slavery, and the two sent warm, affectionate letters for years, even after Lincoln moved into the White House. At the heart of the speculation is Lincoln’s close relationship with Joshua Speed, a Springfield merchant who helped the young lawyer by allowing him to share his upstairs room – and bed – for four years. It wasn’t just a period, but something that went on his whole life”, said ACT-UP activist Larry Kramer in a 1999 interview with Salon. “There’s no question in my mind was a gay man and a totally gay man. But could Lincoln have ever expected that future generations of Americans would judge him not just on his actions, but his sexuality?
The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.” For Lincoln, history was not a thing which loomed over his country like a shadow, but a judgment to be made by future generations. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. But when Abraham Lincoln warned his countrymen about history in his second inaugural address, he was looking forward rather than to the past, saying, “We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. “We cannot escape history.” It’s one of the more memorable lines of a man who, had he not saved the nation from tearing itself in two, would be best known as our nation’s greatest orator.