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psychologist, university professor and author of the 1975 best-seller The Homosexual Matrix, which helped transcend outdated Freudian clichés and establish that a same-sex affectional and sexual orientation is a normal and natural occurrence.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 ...
Really? By whom? Discredit Herndon? I thought Herndon was the source of the Rutledge story -- Herndon and some letter references.
What have you got on that?
According to a book I have on presidential temperaments by Ray Choiniere and Doug Keirsey, Lincoln was a Rational type, who incline to a very dry view of religion. They tend to be deists, scientists, and materialists.
As a check on Sickles's fecklessness and vainglory.
[You, quoting Lincoln] "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....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.
....So even if Lincoln faked piety to crowds, or put on an act to individuals, why would he lie to himself?
In 1862, the blood price of the war was beginning to become apparent. I have told you my personal opinion before, that Lincoln sought the war as a way around the constitutional impediments to abolishing slavery throughout the United States. I've also told you, pace my fellow Southerners, that Lincoln's opposition to slavery was complete, that he was a closet abolitionist even while he toed the more moderate Republican line, and that he was willing, before his elevation, to take a war in order to solve the conundrum on terms amenable to his fellow freesoilers and Abolitionists.
In my own opinion, Lincoln was suffering from moral guilt at having started the war on a calculation, once he began to see the price others would pay to buy his policy. Therefore he invoked Deity as a sort of scapegoat. Or, as GOPcapitalist calls it, "occasionalism".
Isn't that from Claudius's conversation with the aging Livia Augusta, when she asks him to make sure that she is deified after death? IIRC in that scene she comes clean to Claudius.
Suspending habeas corpus is one thing -- sounds like what you are dealing with here, though is actual nonjudicial punishment. It seems Judge Merrick had Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment issues with Lincoln's conduct and that of his Army subordinates.
So when did you graduate from Berkeley?
Now why don't you take the gun out from behind your back and tell us, O enlightened one, about that "Confederate Heritage" thing and that "underbelly" thing?
Then we'll let you know whether you know what you're talking about.
Well said.
Why don't they just take their favorite president, the impeached one and say the he is ac/dc and quit maligning decent people.
They like to quote dicta from Marshall in various cases -- McCullogh vs. Maryland, Ex Parte Bollman and Swartout, and especially The Prize Cases and Texas vs. White.
But they tend to choke on the authority of Dred Scott and my personal favorite, Plessey vs. Ferguson. And if you really want to see a smutty Court munging up the Bill of Rights, try to have a read through the syllabus of U.S. vs. Cruikshank (1876), which is almost pure squid ink, and which turned loose a group of KKK defendants charged under federal law with attempting to violate the rights of a group of black voters. The really interesting finding in Cruikshank was that, although the Bill of Rights was a federal document, the enforcment of the citizens' rights was the States' obligation.
Wonder what capitan thinks about that.
Yeah, we're all aware of your opinions that you constantly try to pass off as fact.
In my own opinion, Lincoln was suffering from moral guilt at having started the war on a calculation, once he began to see the price others would pay to buy his policy. Therefore he invoked Deity as a sort of scapegoat. Or, as GOPcapitalist calls it, "occasionalism".
And I promise you that I will give this latest opinion of yours the same consideration and the same weight as I give all your other opinions.
I think you give too much credit to Herndon and not enough to Weik. Herndon sold his research to Weik in 1869 and most people agree that the book was written primarily by Weik with Herndon's input. Given that you can't know for sure if Weik relayed Herndon's reminicenses with 100% accuracy. And Herndon is the only one of the people closest to Lincoln who seemed to doubt his belief in God.
On the fact that it is impossible to reproduce word-for-word the exact wording of a single conversation held 30 years earlier even if you remember the conversation itself.
I don't know, I can remember word for word a couple of conversations I had from more than 30 years ago. The reason I remember these particular ones is becuase they had such an impact on me at the time. Such could very well be the case with Speed's conversation with Lincoln. Just because you doubt it is not reason enough to discard it.
One need not be, however there are persons who believe in some form of a higher being but are not Christian or, speaking more broadly, not even in the judeo-christian umbrella. Exempting atheists, virtually all religions in the world believe in a god of some form or another. That does not make them all Christians though, nor are the majority of those "gods" legitimate. Lincoln, from all that we know, did not practice within the judeo-christian umbrella of faiths and thus falls outside that category.
That's pretty ballsy on your part, don't you think? Passing judgement on the legitimacy of Lincoln's God? Not to mention claiming his God was not the same as yours and deciding for yourself that Lincoln believed in a false God. Lincoln wasn't a Christian in your sense. But he summed read the Bible constantly, referred to God in Christian terms, and his belief in God, certainly in the last 5 or 6 years of his life was obvious. And if he came to God comparatively late in life then what of it? Why does that invalidate his faith?
That is false. He never belonged to any formal church and only occassionally attended a church in DC with his wife because she insisted upon going.
Biographies of Lincoln describe his attendance at the New York Avenue Presbyterian church as 'regular' or 'frequent' depending on the book.
Nope. Based on Herndon, Ward Hill Lamon, and Mary Todd Lincoln - three members of the very small circle of people who truly knew Lincoln on a personal level.
Nope. All agree that Lincoln was not a Christian in the normal sense of the word, but not even Herndon said Lincoln did not believe in God.
They don't, but that also gives rise to WHICH GOD they believe in. Persons who fall under the judeo-christian umbrella worship what is often referred to as the God of Moses and Abraham. But not all persons who claim to worship a "god" worship the one true God of Moses and Abraham. Hindus worship a set of "gods." Mohammedans worship a moon deity who they have even tried to recast in a manner that bears great resemblance to the Judeo-Christian God, though ultimately they deny Him. Animists, pagans, voodoo witchdoctors, the ancient greeks and egyptians also all worshipped a "god" or set of "gods," but that doesn't make them believers in the real God any more than it does with Lincoln.
And what makes you believe that the God that Lincoln believed in was not the God of Abraham? I'm not aware that he quoted the Koran or even read it. I don't think he participated in Voodoo or worshipped his ancestors. He had a complex relationship with God. He had his doubts and his beliefs, and the fact that they differed from yours does not make that he held them any less or that they are somehow invalid.
Why would someone who doubted the existence of God dwell on him to the extent Lincoln did?
I'm talking about the Lincolnista crowd right here on FR. They frequent threads such as this one and many of them are actively posting right here. Given your own positions on the matter it would not be improper to include you in their ranks.
WRT to the members of that crowd, several as I have noted carry around dark secrets that have gotten them banned. WhiskePapa - for a time the de facto leader of your type on threads such as these - was banned a couple months ago for bashing Bush and recently seen praising Michael Moore on usenet. Another longtime Lincolnista around here, #3Fan, turned out to be an aryan nation kook and got banned accordingly. Now if you want to wrap yourself up in the mantle of FR's Lincoln idolatry club that's fine by me, snicker boy, but don't go around baselessly accusing others of guilty associations when your own ranks are full of known dirty laundry.
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