# 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:** 2
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a8b319/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_wuzzy)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/21 "2017-01-23T18:49:18Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > 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. I can think of a variety of reasons as to why sex with FDR might not have been particularly enjoyable for Eleanor Roosevelt. Which is _not_ to suggest Eleanor’s own sexuality isn’t in question. ---
**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, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/22 "2017-01-23T22:27:05Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > 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. Vidal also stated tried to make it look like there was something going on twixt Washington and the young men in his circle, especially LaFayette and Hamilton. While both those men may have responded to a strong father figure, I’ve never read anything that implied anything untoward. Vidal also theorized that the offense Burr challenged Hamilton for was the rumor that Burr was having improper relations with his own daughter, which is certainly possible (it’s not known exactly what Hamilton said and Burr did have an abnormally close relationship with Theodosia) but which is not at all proven, but has entered some official histories anyway due to the popularity of that novel. [QUOTE=AK84] What’s your opinion on Mrs Roosevelt? [/QUOTE] While they didn’t write sexually explicit letters to each other (not that survive anyway), they definitely address their physical intimacy with each other, including kissing on the mouth and lying down and holding each other, which wasn’t usual. Considering they often traveled together alone I’d think that a sexual relationship was more likely than unlikely. (I’m not an expert on the Roosevelts by any means and the biggest surprise to me from the Ken Burns series was how non-maternal Eleanor was; I’d always thought she was first and foremost a matriarchal homebody and she was neither, pretty much giving her kids over to her mother-in-law.) ---
**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, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/23 "2017-01-23T23:47:00Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > ]Vidal also theorized that the offense Burr challenged Hamilton for was the rumor that Burr was having improper relations with his own daughter, which is certainly possible Why — I’ve read, on these very Boards no lef, ye determination that a _recent_ Prefident was guilty of that very _offence_ ! ‘_An accused devil is a guilty devil_’. > [@](#): > > the biggest surprise to me from the Ken Burns series was how non-maternal Eleanor was; I’d always thought she was first and foremost a matriarchal homebody and she was neither, pretty much giving her kids over to her mother-in-law.) And also the Archetypal Wicked First Lady \*. All First Ladies attract demented abuse from somebody or the other, but in her case they went to town. - Prolly not a popular film of the 1940s. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/24 "2017-01-24T19:22:44Z")
> [@Evan\_Drake](#): > > Why — I’ve read, on these very Boards no lef, ye determination that a _recent_ Prefident was guilty of that very _offence_ ! > ‘_An accused devil is a guilty devil_’. There are already porn films about the current president and first First Daughter. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/25 "2017-01-26T02:28:26Z")
> [@Evan\_Drake](#): > > 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. So was Oscar Wilde. ---
**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 26, 2017, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/26 "2017-01-26T02:54:12Z")
Indeed, but Wilde was bisexual ( with a preference to young boys ) there has been no suggestion that Melville did anything with anyone other than his wife. Incidentally, Melville is a Scots name, derived from the Norman ‘ **Bad Town** ’. A 1000 years time there could be a surname such as Direldtun, derived from ‘**[Dirty Old Town](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Old_Town)**’. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/27 "2017-01-26T23:11:34Z")
> [@Evan\_Drake](#): > > Indeed, but Wilde was bisexual ( with a preference to young boys ) there has been no suggestion that Melville did anything with anyone other than his wife. “[A] preference to young boys” in the “young adult men” sense, I feel compelled to ad. I’ve seen no evidence that he was an ephebophile or pedophile. He tended to like late-teens and twenty-something rentboys, some of whom (like Robbie Ross) were actually the aggressor in the relationship. Whether he was bi or just conformed to the standards of his time and his desperate need for money by marrying a well off young lady is hard to say. He does seem to have had experience with women before his marriage (Florence Balcombe, who became Mrs. Bram Stoker- she was not destined to have romantic happiness- being his most famous), but his infidelities seem to have been exclusively with men. [QUOTE=Evan Drake] there has been no suggestion that Melville did anything with anyone other than his wife. [/quote] Though he did write a book about a bunch of sweaty men with no women around all on a boat so that their captain could follow his obsession with a gigantic Dick. Some of Melville’s letters to Hawthorne and others are interpreted by some as homoerotic. I haven’t read enough about him (and to be honest I don’t have enough interest in him) to have formed an opinion. I could speculate on homoeroticism in Bartleby I suppose, but I would prefer not to. Though apparently I did participate [in a thread on the subject](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=566644). ---
**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 27, 2017, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/28 "2017-01-27T03:36:20Z")
ISWYDT. Bartleby, I don’t know or care. I just enjoyed the study of a guy with obsessive-compulsive disorder. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2017, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/29 "2017-01-27T04:45:30Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > “[A] preference to young boys” in the “young adult men” sense, I feel compelled to ad. I’ve seen no evidence that he was an ephebophile or pedophile. He tended to like late-teens and twenty-something rentboys, some of whom (like Robbie Ross) were actually the aggressor in the relationship. > Whether he was bi or just conformed to the standards of his time and his desperate need for money by marrying a well off young lady is hard to say. He does seem to have had experience with women before his marriage (Florence Balcombe, who became Mrs. Bram Stoker- she was not destined to have romantic happiness- being his most famous), but his infidelities seem to have been exclusively with men. Well, then he won’t be the first “gay” personage to have had extra-marital “straight” relationships. Both Alexander the Great and Edward II, who certainly probably were what we now think of as gay had illegitimate children from politically unimportant affairs. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2017, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/30 "2017-01-27T15:47:11Z")
The concepts of “gay” and “straight” have always been fluid. There was a time in the 1920s when male-male sex was not considered a homosexual act (in the current sense) as long as you didn’t “play the woman.” Any list about the sexuality of historical personages has to be taken with a lot of scrutiny. Often, the list makers have an agenda\* of having as many names as possible, which means they don’t look at the facts in the context of the time (it a common error of historical analysis). Thus things that are clear signs of a particular relationship nowadays are far more ambiguous (or even dead wrong) when looking at the past. This is an especial problems when analyzing letters. People tended to write more floridly in the 19th century, so what now would be a sign of a romantic relationship was just how you talked to close non-sexual friends. At best you can say that, given modern interpretations of language and sexuality, there are phrases that sound like be signs of homosexuality if someone wrote them today. Whether they meant that at the time is too ambiguous a question to draw conclusions from the words alone. \*Latin pun ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2017, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/31 "2017-01-27T18:11:29Z")
> [@Evan\_Drake](#): > > 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. I’m not sure I’d want to claim Nixon for my team. Wouldn’t he be picked last? ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2017, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/32 "2017-01-27T18:28:59Z")
Nixon seemed to have a single target sexuality. I.e, Pat Nixon. He used to drive her to her dates, hoping she would eventually see he was the one for her. (he succeeded obviously). As it is, situational sexuality is fairly well attested, so its not inconceivable that Hamilton and others did occasionally dabble so to speak, when far from female company. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2017, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/33 "2017-01-27T19:06:26Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > I guess I would simply ask in response to the proposed question, “Who cares?” (whether or not Lincoln was gay…) Sure, it’s hip to say “not that there’s anything wrong with that” but when every single time someone is hypothesized as being gay a legion of straight deniers pops up to exclaim “uh-uh!!!1!” it feels more like erasure. We know there were gays in history, it’s just harder to find it with all the erasure going on. When women celebrate women in history, do you say “who cares?” How about black history? “Who cares” again? ---
**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 27, 2017, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/34 "2017-01-27T19:09:00Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > The concepts of “gay” and “straight” have always been fluid. There was a time in the 1920s when male-male sex was not considered a homosexual act (in the current sense) as long as you didn’t “play the woman.” Doubtful. Particularly the 1920s when anti-gay laws were rife in America ( however if American legislators noticed anything happening, their immediate instincts were to ban it \*). And Jefferson’s advocacy of castrating homosexuals probably had little to do with his dislike of Hamilton. Probably. The mention of Oscar — and we got the Ballad of Reading Gaol out of it — reminded me of **[William Johnson Cory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Johnson_Cory)**, creator of the equally mind-boggling **[Heraclitus](http://www.bartleby.com/101/759.html)**, forced out of Eton as master in 1872 and **[Oscar Browning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Browning)**, forced out of Eton as master three years later. Evidently Eton was the happening place to be in the '60s and '70s. Both remarkably important as far as any teacher can be ( Cory taught Lord Rosebery [of whom nothing would surprise me \*\*] and Arthur Balfour, ‘ **Miss Fanny** ’, although definitely not gay — moustaches were just _in_ during those decades: both later prime ministers ), however allegations of paedophila — although not exactly untrue, are inexact, since they were both reformers against the scholastic system that surrounded them. And any reason to give a dog a bad name and hang him. I don’t care for speculation on modern relationships or desires, not being God: 100 times more difficult with those past the Great Divide. - In **[Pennsylvania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_traffic_laws)** it was deemed that a car meeting cattle should be dismantled immediately behind a hedge. And nothing _ever_ exercised their minds like nude bathing. \*\* His dying to an old 78 record of the Eton Boating Song redeems him a little. But he was still a Whig. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2017, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/35 "2017-01-27T21:52:55Z")
Walt Whitman we can be pretty sure of, although he did sometimes claim to have numerous children (I think erroneously- he was screwing with the interviewer). And he kissed Oscar Wilde, who publicly boasted of kissing the old man later. Few though were quite as open for obvious reasons, plus many needed to marry for financial or social reasons. You have a lot of people in history like Robert E. Lee’s eldest son, George Washington Parke Custis Lee, nicknamed “Bunny”. Like his father he attended West Point, graduated at the top of his class, and became a Confederate general. Unlike his father, who whether he fooled around was a flirt with the ladies, Custis was “extremely shy” around women, never married, and had the same live-in male valet for about fifty years. Was he gay? Who knows. He could legitimately have been shy around women, or his secret might have been that he was impotent. He was also very vain about his appearance, though so was his father (and so were many military men). As for living with his valet for all those years, not unheard of for free servants to stay with a family all of their lives: his own sister never married and had a live-in maid that she not only got arrested for refusing to separate from (the maid was black and when the Virginia streetcars were segregated she was not allowed to ride in the Whites Only car with her mistress, so Miss Lee got up and moved to the Black car with her and was arrested- was a huge embarrassment when they learned whose daughter the old lady was) but paid to travel the world with her. The maid was with her when she was caught behind German lines at the outbreak of WW1. (Both Miss Lee and the maid were treated with great respect until they could be safely sent from the German spa to England.) Maybe both she and her brother were gay, maybe both were, maybe neither was. It’s fun to speculate but barring time travel that’s about all we can do. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2017, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/36 "2017-01-27T23:16:25Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > Sure, it’s hip to say “not that there’s anything wrong with that” but when every single time someone is hypothesized as being gay a legion of straight deniers pops up to exclaim “uh-uh!!!1!” it feels more like erasure. > . > We know there were gays in history, it’s just harder to find it with all the erasure going on. > > When women celebrate women in history, do you say “who cares?” How about black history? “Who cares” again? Nobody, at least in this thread, is trying to erase anything. We’re just trying to ascertain whether Lincoln in fact was gay and it seems the preponderance of evidence is against it. Sympathizing with gays, blacks and women is one thing but bending history in order to make people feel better about themselves is ill-advised to say the very least. Cleopatra was not black nor is there sufficient evidence to say Lincoln was gay. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2017, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/37 "2017-01-27T23:45:53Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > I’m not sure I’d want to claim Nixon for my team. Wouldn’t he be picked last? He was called Tricky Dick for a reason. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2017, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/38 "2017-01-28T00:14:07Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > The concepts of “gay” and “straight” have always been fluid. There was a time in the 1920s when male-male sex was not considered a homosexual act (in the current sense) as long as you didn’t “play the woman.” I have known guys who would engage in unlimited sexual activities (both top and bottom) with other men… but would not kiss, because that would make them gay. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2017, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/39 "2017-01-28T09:03:46Z")
Friedrich von Steuben, the Prussian General who trained the Continental Army in proper tactics during the American War of Independence, was almost certainly gay. We have no idea if he had a fling with Hamilton, but he seems to have had relationships with a couple other officers in the Continental Army. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2017, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823/40 "2017-01-28T10:00:19Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > I have known guys who would engage in unlimited sexual activities (both top and bottom) with other men… but would not kiss, because that would make them gay. Right, it’s the same as guys in prison. While incarcerated they will indulge in homosexual activites that would have brought a blush to the cheeks of the most hardened frequenters of SF bath-houses in the 80s yet they will swear blind they are neither gay nor bisexual. l [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-abraham-lincoln-gay/777823.md?page=3)