Some now Say that Abe Lincoln was Homosexual?!!!

"I have read nearly a hundred books/major studies on Lincoln (remember, my specialty is Civil War era history) and not come across one iota of proof of his "gay" activity.

But a number of authors deal with the syphillis issue, Mary's insanity from it, etc. Suggest you ignore the "gay" part and do some reading on the philandering of Lincoln (in Memphis, while away from his wife - whole volumes attesting to it with great detail and historic support)."

You are not the only one who has read a great deal about Lincoln. I suspect that you can find almost any theory in print about any major figure in history, including Lincoln. But the fact that it is in print does not make it so. Suffice to say that no historian of any repute has published anything about Lincon's alleged philandering. I also have dozens of books about Lincoln, none of which mention any philandering. I think it is fair to say that your claim is a very, very obscure one. There are thousands of books on Lincoln as he is one of the most written about figures in history, so you can probably find one that claims he is an alien from another planet if you looked hard enough.

 

The essence of the previously mentioned review is given in the quote below:

THE INTIMATE WORLD OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, already an object of derision among specialists, contains a poison pill in an afterword by Michael Burlingame entitled "A Respectful Dissent." Recently retired from Connecticut College, Burlingame has a monumental three-volume Lincoln biography in progress with Johns Hopkins University Press. He and Tripp got along well and shared information, if not a thesis.

"I liked Tripp, but he was careless and sloppy," Burlingame told me. "I'm surprised that Free Press accepted my afterword since it says the book is full of baloney." In particular, Burlingame devastates Tripp's intellectual honesty by noting that he had suppressed many stories of Lincoln's heterosexual interest.

"Since it is virtually impossible to prove a negative, Dr. Tripp's thesis cannot be rejected outright," wrote Burlingame. "But given the paucity of hard evidence adduced by him, and given the abundance of contrary evidence indicating that Lincoln was drawn romantically and sexually to some women, a reasonable conclusion, it seems to me, would be that it is possible but highly unlikely that Abraham Lincoln was 'predominately homosexual.'"

 

>>>>>Well, we have a result - Mary with syphillis that drove her to suicide attempts/asylum, etc.<<<<<

All that is known with any certainty is that she behaved in an eccentric way in her declining years - but the same behavior can be found in many people who have significant health problems related to aging - problems such as hardening of the arteries, stroke, etc.

 

"They even mentiond in passing that Eleanor Roosevelt was gay, too, because of some letters she wrote to a woman stating that she wanted to kiss her!"

That has been around a number of years and some of her family has said that it is okay if Eleanor was a lesbian, but Eleanor is the subject of another thread.

 

There is in fact an organized group of very committed republicans who are gay. They call themselves "The Log Cabin Republicans." The reference is obviously to Old Abe's humble origins. It will be very interesting to see how the Republican Party deals with this element if they ever decide to make some noise.

 

Fortunately, 98% of homosexuals are Democrats. There are 4 major groups in the Democrat Party who consider themselves victims: homosexuals and lesbians, Jews, African-Americans, and Hispanics.

Hispanics peeled off and went for Bush about 45%. Perhaps they don't think that they are victims as much. The other groups who think that they are victims went almost 100% for the Democrats.