Posted on 10/28/2004 6:07:00 AM PDT by Pokey78
If the loving heart of the Great Emancipator found its natural amorous passions overwhelmingly directed toward those of his own sex, it would certainly be a stunning rebuke to the Republican Party’s scapegoating of same-sex love for electoral purposes. And a forthcoming book by the late Dr. C.A. Tripp — The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, to be published in the new year by Free Press — makes a powerful case that Lincoln was a lover of men.
Tripp, who worked closely in the 1940s and 1950s with the groundbreaking sexologist Alfred Kinsey, was a clinical psychologist, university professor and author of the 1975 best-seller The Homosexual Matrix, which helped transcend outdated Freudian clichés and establish that a same-sex affectional and sexual orientation is a normal and natural occurrence.
In his book on Lincoln, Tripp draws on his years with Kinsey, who, he wrote, "confronted the problem of classifying mixed sex patterns by devising his 0-to-6 scale, which allows the ranking of any homosexual component in a person’s life from none to entirely homosexual. By this measure Lincoln qualifies as a classical 5 — predominantly homosexual, but incidentally heterosexual."
Tripp also found, based on multiple historical accounts, that Lincoln attained puberty unusually early, by the age of 9 or 10 — early sexualization being a prime Kinsey indicator for same-sex proclivities. Even Lincoln’s stepmother admitted in a post-assassination interview that young Abe "never took much interest in the girls." And Tripp buttresses his findings that Lincoln was a same-sex lover with important new historical contributions.
(Excerpt) Read more at laweekly.com ...
Everything you need to know about this article is contained in this phrase. Dr. Kinsey is a much discredited "sexologist", bisexual fraud who perpetrated a huge hoax on the world with his "Kinsey Report." Among his more egregious legacies is the oft touted "fact" of the general population being 10% homosexual, a bon mot he derived from interviewing hard core felons in prison populations.
This gentleman Tripp was a close associate? Well, by his analogies, Thomas Jefferson was also a homosexual: no kids, close friendships with men, creative mind, liked to wear wigs, etc. The only problem with this scenerio is that it conflicts with the liberal cant that Jefferson, and not his brothers, was pokin' his slave women.
Sheesh...
Ireland is a shrill liberal gay activist who seeks to accuse any and all Republicans of being gay.
Good Lord, what next? Anything Kinsey would have to say comes under the title of FRAUD, just like FREUD. I hate these so called experts!
I always did wonder about his wig and tight pants (smile). M
Oh, they've already said that!
Insofar as you located an equestrian Lincoln statue, it meets the criteria. As to whatever use Wlat may have for it, I suggest you ask him.
Jefferson had several children. One of his grandson's was the Secretary of War for the confederacy.
But most Northerners were not sympathetic to the Abolitionist movement and after the Proclamation, I believe, there were quite a few Northerners that were not happy.
As I noted previously, toward the end of his life he could probably be described as a loose deist. He probably believed in a greater being in the universe but not much more than that and certainly not any Christian savior. Again, reading his public addresses to signify his religion is misleading and erronious as virtually all who knew him well observed that he consciously included biblical imagery into his speeches because he knew of its powerful rhetorical impact.
Indeed they were not. The proclamation, however, had wartime effects that disadvantaged the confederacy abroad and attempted to destabilize it at home (specifically the hope of inducing slave unrest behind the lines).
What about his private writings or conversations with individuals?
His private conversations with many of his closest individual friends and family - Herndon, Lamon, and Mary Todd to be specific - all reveal a strain of loose deism and/or atheism.
How do you explain these?
"One evening during the dreadful summer of 1864, his old friend,Joshua Speed found him intently reading the Bible. "I am glad to see you so profitably engaged," said Speed.
"Yes," said the President, "I am profitably engaged."
"Well," commented the visitor, "if you have recovered from your skepticism,I am sorry to say that I have not."
Looking his old comrade in the face, Lincoln said, "You are wrong, Speed. Take all this book upon reason as you can, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man." -- "Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln and Notes of a Visit to California" by Joshua Speed, 1884
Why would Lincoln try to pull the wool over Speed's eyes? His longest and closest friend. His lover, according to you all. How could he hope to fool him, and why should he try?
"Well, I will tell you how it was. In the pinch of the campaign up there (at Gettysburg) when everybody seemed panic stricken and nobody could tell what was going to happen, oppressed by the gravity of our affairs, I went to my room one day and locked the door and got down on my knees before Almighty God and prayed to Him mightily for victory at Gettysburg. I told Him that this war was His war, and our cause His cause, but we could not stand another Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville... And after that, I don't know how it was, and I cannot explain it, but soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul. The feeling came that God had taken the whole business into His own hands and that things would go right at Gettysburg and that is why I had no fears about you." -- Letter to MGEN Daniel Sickles, July 1863
General Sickles was not noted as a religious man, certainly nowhere in the same league as General Howard. Sickles was a braggart and a corrupt politician who had murdered his wife's lover. What possible reason would Lincoln have for feigning spirituality to General Sickles? What would it profit him?
"The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party; and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect his purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true; that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere great power on the minds of the now contestants, he could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And, having begun, he could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds." -- Lincoln private meditations 1862.
That is from a note Lincoln wrote to himself, something that John Hay found among his personal papers and kept. Hay is convinced that Lincoln never meant it to be seen by anyone else. So even if Lincoln faked piety to crowds, or put on an act to individuals, why would he lie to himself?
Very easily.
1. The Speed account: Non-believers throughout history have long recognized the value of the bible as a philosophical and moral text even if they don't believe the divine nature of it. All Speed's story (told many years after the fact meaning that even if it is true, the _exact_ wording of what Lincoln and Speed said is not reliably reproduced) proves is that Lincoln read the bible and supposedly got something out of it. What that something was we do not know, but given that Mary Todd and Herndon both noted he was not a Christian "in the normal sense," it is unlikely that he was reading it in the same way that a normal Christian would.
2. The so-called Sickles "letter" does not appear in Lincoln's Collected Works and is virtually certain to be apocryphal. In fact, the original version was not even a "letter" but rather what was supposedly told to Sickles. The only letter in July of 1863 that Lincoln sent to Sickles about Gettysburg is here:
http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?type=proximity;c=lincoln;cc=lincoln;sid=179681d86fc7e8d3169d6bf891e6b6f7;rgn=div1;q1=gettysburg;op2=near;amt2=40;op3=near;amt3=40;view=text;subview=detail;sort=occur;idno=lincoln6;node=lincoln6%3A680
3. There is nothing in the 1862 "meditation" to suggest that it is a Christian document. It refers to religious matters in only the most vague sense and could easily mean just about anything from deism to a psychological divinity complex (i.e. believing oneself to be the chosen agent of a divine being) to a bizarre and heretical form of divine occasionalism (i.e. assigning all that happens in this world, including bad and evil things, to "the will of god," often as a means of escaping personal responsibility for an evil act - this is a recurrent psychological problem in the political arena throughout history and it is very common at the present in mohammedan society).
Speeds story is told in 1884, several years before the biography supposedly written by Herndon was published. If age is the factor then why isn't Herndon more suspect? Other than the fact that it seems to support your point of view, I mean?
... the _exact_ wording of what Lincoln and Speed said is not reliably reproduced...
You base this on what?
...but given that Mary Todd and Herndon both noted he was not a Christian "in the normal sense...
Why does one need to be a Christian "in the normal sense" to believe in God? Lincoln attended services regularly, spoke often of God in speeches and letters and conversations, but is still a non-believer. Based on Herndon alone.
There is nothing in the 1862 "meditation" to suggest that it is a Christian document.
Again, why does someone have to be a member of a recognized Christian sect to believe in God? Lincoln made no secret of his dislike of organized religious sects with their rigid dogmas. But from that you take it a step further and proclaim he had no faith at all.
It refers to religious matters in only the most vague sense and could easily mean just about anything from deism to a psychological divinity complex (i.e. believing oneself to be the chosen agent of a divine being) to a bizarre and heretical form of divine occasionalism (i.e. assigning all that happens in this world, including bad and evil things, to "the will of god," often as a means of escaping personal responsibility for an evil act - this is a recurrent psychological problem in the political arena throughout history and it is very common at the present in mohammedan society).
To you perhaps. But if Lincoln was raising himself to a deity then why the uncertainty? Surely in his mind, if he did view himself as the tool of God, then he was on God's side and God was on his. To me it looks like a man who wants to believe that what he is doing is just and rightious in the eyes of God, but still has some lingering fears that he's wrong. But that's just me. I don't have the ability to look into Lincoln's soul from beyond the grave and pass unerring judgement on his faith. Like you believe you do.
NS, Says who?
The New England representatives who almost seceded (and should have) over the War of 1812, to name a few.
Almost seceded? But they didn't really secede so we really don't know, do we? And amazingly enough for every one of those who mistakenly thought that a state could secede at will, there were those who were convinced that they could not. But, of course, a state must be able to secede. You say so.
That's still easier than being a southron supporter which, as far as I can tell, requires a frontal lobotomy, chaining one's maiden aunt in the attic, marrying a close relation, and swearing off any education after the 5th or 6th grade. Especially in history.
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