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When told that Kramer had expressed enthusiasm about Tripp's findings, Tripp snarls good-naturedly: "Of course he did. Kramer's a propagandist. And that's all I have to say." He does acknowledge, however, that his research was based on "absolutely new" primary sources that no other historian has seen.

All this talk of new primary sources makes the Lincoln history establishment curious despite their skepticism.

"It's possible there is something else, but I would be very surprised," says Michael Burlingame, author of the "Inner World of Abraham Lincoln" and history professor at Connecticut College. "If there's a Joshua Speed diary, then I'm eager to see it." Indeed, Burlingame is one volume into a three-volume account of Lincoln's life; presumably such findings might guide his current project in new directions.

Burlingame is familiar with Tripp's work and despite his "enormous respect for the man," he disagrees with his ideas about Lincoln's sexual orientation. "Speed and Lincoln were close emotionally but their letters have no discernable romantic overtones," he says. "Besides, there is too much evidence that Lincoln was strongly attracted to women." By way of example he cites the fact that Lincoln was a "proto-feminist," fell "head over heels in love with 18-year-old Matilda Edwards" and loved a beautiful young woman named Ann Rutledge.

Such evidence, however, can be interpreted several ways. Heterosexual men have never had a corner on the market for feminist-friendly attitudes -- in fact, one might argue that proto-homosexual men might better sympathize with the plights of proto-feminist women. Moreover, some historians reject the tale of his love for Matilda Edwards as a paranoid fantasy that Mary Todd Lincoln concocted to explain why Lincoln abandoned her at the altar. In "Lincoln," David Herbert Donald suggests that there was "no real justification" to think that Lincoln had fallen in love with her and that Edwards had expressly denied that he ever "even stooped to pay [her] a compliment." In turn, Douglas Wilson calls Donald's refusal to deal with the Edwards evidence "just hopeless."

Historians also posit wildly different scenarios regarding the doomed Ann Rutledge. All evidence comes from third-hand accounts that held that Lincoln became acquainted with her while she was still engaged to another man. Soon afterwards, she fell ill; Lincoln sat by her bedside for the last two days of her life. Some contend the two were on their way to being engaged, others that Lincoln might have befriended her simply because she was already spoken for. Others say her death left him a devastated man who, at least from a romantic perspective, never recovered. Yet as Kramer is quick to point out, not a single letter exists between Rutledge and Lincoln, and in the thousand pages of Lincoln's personal correspondence, he never once mentions her name.

Finally, in chronicling the proof of Lincoln's heterosexual romances, historians are split in their interpretation of his marriage to the volatile, possibly insane, drug-addled Mary Todd Lincoln. By all accounts the couple had a difficult, turbulent relationship, but over the course of 10 years they managed to bear four children. Some historians paint theirs as a difficult but loving bond; others as the quintessential marriage from hell. Douglas Wilson gives credence to stories that Lincoln visited prostitutes during his marriage and later believed himself to have contracted syphilis. David Herbert Donald, in contrast, paints Lincoln as a faithful, if not exactly doting, husband.

All of these heterosexist interpretations get Kramer foaming at the mouth. "Why is their version so much more believable than mine? So much of the history that is shoveled into the world is bullshit -- we really have to invent our own."

Do such overt desires for a specific outcome make it impossible for Kramer to separate fact from wishful thinking? That was the charge leveled against those who initially argued that Walt Whitman was a 19th century homosexual. At first this idea was derided as far-fetched propaganda, but it is now largely accepted (although academics continue to debate whether it is legitimate to call Whitman "gay").

But does it really matter if Lincoln was gay? What difference does it make if the man who reunited the country, ended slavery, wrote some of the most majestic speeches in the English language and died a martyr's death desired -- or actually had sex with -- other men? According to Illinois state historian Tom Schwarz, it doesn't make any difference: "It's only important if he made conscious decisions based on his sexuality which then influenced his political behavior, public policy or his decisions on slavery. If not, its importance readily diminishes."

Schwarz's politic words, however, don't take into account the enormous symbolic significance that will attend any reevaluation of the sexual orientation of America's most beloved figure. Imagine if the Hemings-Jefferson love affair had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt (which, as scientists continue to remind us, still hasn't happened) in the Jim Crow 1950s, when certain states still prosecuted miscegenation? Bigots would have had one less legendary leg to stand on. Similarly, if the man on our $5 bill was proven to be gay, right-wing politicians who invoke Lincoln in one breath and denounce the homosexual menace in the next would be forced to reexamine the deeper meaning of the phrase "With malice toward none; with charity for all." Certainly, for queer theorists and gay scholars, the ability to claim the man who was arguably America's greatest president as their own would arm gay battalions with a powerful new rhetorical weapon.

"Greatest" is the operative word here. When Kramer first announced at the Madison meeting that he was setting out to get gays their "first gay president," he could have made his job easier by looking to Lincoln's predecessor, James Buchanan. The only bachelor to take office, Buchanan spent 15 years living with Sen. William King. The contemporary press ridiculed the men's relationship mercilessly, and Andrew Jackson once called King "Miss Nancy." The problem, of course, is that James Buchanan is not the guy to stake a modern civil rights movement on. Passive and ineffectual, he slowly but surely led the country into a bloody civil war. Despite the fact that it was "obvious" that Buchanan was gay, Paul Russell says he chose not to include him in "The Gay 100" -- he just wasn't anything to be proud of.

One equally controversial gay figure did make it into the book: none other than the fire-breathing Larry Kramer. In fact, he's the highest-ranked of all living people on the list. "A lot of people wouldn't agree with that," Kramer mutters when informed of this fact.

In similar fashion, many of Lincoln's contemporary enemies would have seen the deification of the rough-hewn, socially awkward president as the worst kind of historical revisionism. But as Kramer knows, from a political perspective, revisionist history is the only kind of history that counts.
salon.com | May 3, 1999

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