# Was Abraham Lincoln gay? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [January 22, 2017, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823 "2017-01-22T14:32:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2017, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/1 "2017-01-22T14:32:12Z")
[Link to Cecil’s column.](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2502/was-abraham-lincoln-gay) In the column mention is made of a book that gay-activist Larry Kramer was writing in which he claimed he would publish letters, etc proving Lincoln was gay. In 1999 he read extracts from these purported letters but by the time Cecil wrote this column in 2004 Kramer’s book had still not been published. So did it ever appear or did we hear any more from Kramer concerning his so-called evidence? ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2017, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/2 "2017-01-22T14:52:03Z")
It looks like he did write a book, but more about “gay history” in general, although he mentions Lincoln. I’ve never heard of this guy before. I must say, he seems to have something of a monomania on the subject. > [@](#): > > In the book, Kramer writes that in addition to Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, and Richard Nixon were gay. > **[Larry Kramer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Kramer#The_American_People:_A_History)** > > Laurence David Kramer (June 25, 1935 – May 27, 2020) was an American playwright, author, film producer, public health advocate, and gay rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working for Columbia Pictures, which led him to London, where he worked with United Artists. There he wrote the screenplay for the film Women in Love (1969) and received an Academy Award nomination for his work. > In 1978, Kramer introduced a controversial and confrontational style in his novel Faggots... It turns out that Wikipedia has a whole article devoted to Lincoln’s sexuality in specific. There’s a little more information there about those alledged letters. > [@](#): > > In 1999, Larry Kramer claimed that he had uncovered previously unknown documents while performing research for his work-in-progress, The American People: A History, including some allegedly found hidden in the floorboards of the old store once shared by Lincoln and Joshua Speed. The documents reportedly provide explicit details of a relationship between Lincoln and Speed, and currently reside in a private collection in Davenport, Iowa. Their authenticity, however, has been called into question by historians such as Gabor Boritt, who wrote, “Almost certainly this is a hoax.” C. A. Tripp also expressed his skepticism over Kramer’s discovery, writing, “Seeing is believing, should that diary ever show up; the passages claimed for it have not the slightest Lincolnian ring.” > **[Sexuality of Abraham Lincoln](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexuality_of_Abraham_Lincoln)** > > The sexuality of Abraham Lincoln has been the topic of historical speculation and research. No such discussions have been documented during or shortly after Lincoln's lifetime; however, in recent decades, some writers have discussed purported evidence that he may have been homosexual. > Mainstream historians generally hold that Lincoln was heterosexual, noting that the historical context explains away the supposed evidence, that he had romantic ties with women, and that he had four children in an ... ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2017, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/3 "2017-01-22T19:02:10Z")
I’ve seen a half-decent case for James Buchanan (who, to be sure, isn’t a President that anybody would want to claim as an icon, considering how he is, at least for the moment, a serious contender for the “worst President ever” label), but the rest of the list sounds like this guy was just drawing names out of a (stovepipe?) hat. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2017, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/4 "2017-01-22T21:47:59Z")
I guess I would simply ask in response to the proposed question, “Who cares?” (whether or not Lincoln was gay…) ---
**Author:** ![Washoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecae2f/32.png) [@Washoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Washoe)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2017, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/5 "2017-01-22T23:22:40Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > I guess I would simply ask in response to the proposed question, “Who cares?” (whether or not Lincoln was gay…) A lot of people. The mere fact that the United States has had a gay president, particularly at that time in our history, is in and of itself very interesting from a sociological standpoint. Obviously he was not openly gay, but it is interesting nonetheless. ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/6 "2017-01-23T00:13:04Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > In the book, Kramer writes that in addition to Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, and Richard Nixon were gay. It must be noted there hasn’t been a peep from the Lincoln, Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Jackson, Pierce, Buchanan, Twain, Melville, and Nixon camps since this revelation. Gay activists are free to draw their own conclusions from this silence. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/7 "2017-01-23T02:13:00Z")
> [@Steve\_MB](#): > > I’ve seen a half-decent case for James Buchanan (who, to be sure, isn’t a President that anybody would want to claim as an icon, considering how he is, at least for the moment, a serious contender for the “worst President ever” label), but the rest of the list sounds like this guy was just drawing names out of a (stovepipe?) hat. How about Melville? I mean, have you READ “Billy Budd?” :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/8 "2017-01-23T03:18:27Z")
Based on the voyage of the Pequod I assumed Melville was not as other men were, but then it turns out he was married… … with children. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/9 "2017-01-23T03:23:02Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > I guess I would simply ask in response to the proposed question, “Who cares?” (whether or not Lincoln was gay…) This could be the break the Douglas campaign was looking for. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/10 "2017-01-23T03:34:14Z")
> [@Washoe](#): > > A lot of people. The mere fact that the United States has had a gay president, particularly at that time in our history, is in and of itself very interesting from a sociological standpoint. Obviously he was not openly gay, but it is interesting nonetheless. In light of the fact that any of our presidents in the past could have been gay (or bi) but we simply didn’t know it at the time and don’t have sufficient evidence to conclude it now, I would postulate that speculation on whether or not Lincoln was gay is pretty meaningless. Further, and I find this important, as long as focusing on someone’s sexual preference is important, then it will remain important for people to focus on that, which in my mind is not a good thing. No one knows here if I’m gay, bi, or dogian, and as a result of that fact, the issue never comes up in discussion. 😉 > [@running\_coach](#): > > This could be the break the Douglas campaign was looking for. I think it’s Buell who would have benefitted most! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![purplehearingaid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@purplehearingaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehearingaid)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/11 "2017-01-23T03:40:42Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > I guess I would simply ask in response to the proposed question, “Who cares?” (whether or not Lincoln was gay…) Yeah I was thinking this too , who care ! ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/12 "2017-01-23T04:16:04Z")
> [@purplehearingaid](#): > > Yeah I was thinking this too , who care ! What, gay people don’t count? ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/13 "2017-01-23T08:25:37Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > This could be the break the Douglas campaign was looking for. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/14 "2017-01-23T16:48:28Z")
The general historical consensus on Larry Kramer’s claims is that he’s as full of shit as Elvis after a 5 day cheese orgy. (About the only really hoest thing about Kramer’s writing is in his autobiographical play _Normal Heart_ where he was honest enough to include that other AIDS activists considered him as much of a major league asshole as anti-gay activists did.) I wouldn’t be surprised if Lincoln and Speed experimented while both were bachelors in the same bed at night (though sharing a bed then was equivalent to roommates now), and it is certainly possible Lincoln was gay. It might explain his nervous breakdown on the eve of his marriage, but there are other possible explanations as well. The short answer is we can’t know for certain (I seriously doubt he would have held a homoerotic pose for long enough to take a picture in the 1850s) and it didn’t have anything to do with his presidency anymore than if we could prove or disprove that Lincoln loved big hipped redheads. I could make a case for Lincoln and Jefferson Davis being nephew and uncle that would have at least as much circumstantial evidence for it (Jefferson Davis’s older brother was a notorious horndog who had at least one illegitimate child in Kentucky before Lincoln was born) but again, it’s trivia, not integral, and to prove it w\*\*ould take a ridiculous amount of work for no substantive gain to knowledge. (Lincoln’s depression, relationship with his father, and ribald sense of humor were way more interesting.) His marriage was not the happiest union, but I think in his way he did love her. I think Mary Todd gets a bit of a bad rap from history- yes, she was a virago, but without her I doubt he’d have been president and she lived before medication that would have helped and had LOTS of external circumstances that would have made anybody depressed. They probably stopped having sex following her last pregnancy as doctors told her another childbirth might very well end her life, and abstinence was the only sure birth control, so they were both probably sexually unfulfilled by the White House. His theorized homosexuality could be worked into his marriage’s unhappiness in a novel, but not into a reputable history book. Buchanan, as mentioned, almost certainly was romantically involved with William Rufus Devane King. I seem to remember that Garfield acknowledged a romantic fling with a man in college, but he also had an affair with a woman. (Garfield’s main similarity to Lincoln was his log cabin origins.) Eleanor Roosevelt’s romantic relationship with Lorena Hickock is accepted even by some of her descendants. That’s pretty much it for anything provable LGBT nature in White House history. It could well be half the presidents were flaming queens, but the evidence simply doesn’t prove it. Alexander Hamilton’s [letters to John Laurens](http://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/hamilton-laurens/hamilton-laurens-letters) are also cited as evidence of androphilia though he also had a (famous and disastrous) extramarital affair with a woman. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/15 "2017-01-23T16:55:52Z")
I thought the historical opinion on Hamilton was that the extramarital affair was with the male party, which is why the blackmail was done. Affair with the wife would not have been that scandalous in that relatively permissive era nor surprising since Hamilton was known to prefer other mens wives anyway, thus was merely the “cover story”. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/16 "2017-01-23T17:09:34Z")
Another one is Eleanor Roosevelt. Her letters are while not absolute proof; interesting. Add to the fact she is known to have disliked sex with FDR (one of the reasons he strayed) and you have a compelling case for if not Lesbianism, fluidity? OTH, she was known to be rather cold with pretty much all her loved ones (except her little brother and no not in that way), as her kids recalled; so maybe it was that which led to marital breakdown. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/17 "2017-01-23T17:29:17Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > I thought the historical opinion on Hamilton was that the extramarital affair was with the male party, which is why the blackmail was done. Affair with the wife would not have been that scandalous in that relatively permissive era nor surprising since Hamilton was known to prefer other mens wives anyway, thus was merely the “cover story”. It’s a theory. I’ve never understood why an extramarital affair was such a huge thing: in France it certainly would have met with an expression of “I’m waiting, what’s the scandalous thing you were going to tell me?” and Ben Franklin would have probably asked “Mrs. Reynolds… which one was she? Do you have a miniature to jog my memory…”. But officially, his affair was with Mrs. Reynolds, whose husband blackmailed him thereafter. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/18 "2017-01-23T17:36:10Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > What, gay people don’t count? Alan Turing was gay and he could count quite well. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/19 "2017-01-23T17:49:55Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Alan Turing was gay and he could count quite well. I thought he had a machine to do that for him. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/20 "2017-01-23T18:08:26Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > It’s a theory. I’ve never understood why an extramarital affair was such a huge thing: in France it certainly would have met with an expression of “I’m waiting, what’s the scandalous thing you were going to tell me?” and Ben Franklin would have probably asked “Mrs. Reynolds… which one was she? Do you have a miniature to jog my memory…”. But officially, his affair was with Mrs. Reynolds, whose husband blackmailed him thereafter. Pretty sure I read Gore Vidal saying that a gay encounter was in fact the case. Then again, that dude probably thought that [Augustus’s statue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_of_Prima_Porta) had gay lovers. What’s your opinion on Mrs Roosevelt? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823.md?page=2)