Posted on 01/08/2005 2:31:53 PM PST by quidnunc
The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln
by C.A. Tripp
Free Press, 384 pp., $27
The notion that Abraham Lincoln had homosexual experiences is hardly new. All the way back in 1924, Carl Sandburg's bestselling biography winked at Lincoln's "streak of lavender and spots soft as May violets." And more explicit versions of the idea have appeared in the years since as signaled by "Log Cabin Republicans," the name chosen by gay members of the GOP for their advocacy group.
But the attempt to use this "Gay Lincoln Theory," making the sixteenth president an icon for modern homosexuals, is now poised to make its biggest push led by the late C.A. Tripp's The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, a book published this month by Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster.
The topic of Lincoln's sexuality keeps reappearing because the available evidence is so tantalizing: a jokey poem he wrote in his youth about a boy marrying a boy, a four-year sleeping arrangement with adored friend Joshua Speed, a marriage sometimes said to be reluctant and less than amorous, a lifelong preference for male company, a documented claim that he shared a bed in the summer White House with his soldier-bodyguard in 1862, and a number of other suggestive items.
C.A. Tripp, who died in 2003, was a well-known sex researcher, a protégé of Alfred Kinsey and the author of a 1975 volume, The Homosexual Matrix. After a decade of pondering Lincoln's relations with men, he pronounces in his posthumously published new book on Lincoln's masturbation habits, seduction style, sex positions, and orgasms. Confidently naming five male lovers of the president, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln declares the conclusion absolute and obvious that this married father of four was "predominately homosexual."
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Kennedy had an aid named Lincoln.
And they were all gay. < /sarcasm >
LOL! Well there you go-I rest my case.
Richard Brookhiser, who wrote the review, is too wimpy, though. He's a Manhattan conservative writing for a very liberal publication, and doesn't want to offend anyone. Philip Nobile, who wrote this article, is much more upfront and devastating in his charges against Tripp.
Surrounding the history we learned in school, there's an awful lot of unsubstantiated rumor and speculation. The text books aren't always right, but it's so easy for people who have something to prove to swim or drown in those seas of unproven anecdotes and unverified conclusions. And that seems to be what Tripp has done. He's like the too hungry predator that seizes on every scrap or crumb of food and ends up in a trap which the careful animal escapes.
Ours is "Beavis and Butthead" culture, and plenty of people are almost permanently stupified until they hear something that sounds salacious that and pricks up their ears and rouses them a little out of their stupor. The gay lobby is going to push this book, but I doubt Tripp's work will stand up on its own. As Nobile shows, there are a lot of wholes and leaps in his hypothesis.
Uh-oh! My husband only has MALE friends. Not a woman among them. Should I be concerned, too? :-O
I believe that young Mary Todd was supposed to have been a cute little button.
Every generation in turn assassinates Mr Lincoln!!
Not from the pictures I have seen...She looks like a homely woman.
Real heterosexual men can't have women as friends. Remember the movie "When Harry Met Sally"? (tongue-in-cheek)
Abe Lincoln was a god-fearing man who loved the Lord and was a practicing christian when he went to be the Lord.
Furthermore, just because he slept in the same bed with other guys when he was young (if this is true) was probably due to financial constrictions. Back in his day they didn't have 5 bedroom homes for everyone in the nation like we do now! Back then everyone Brothers and sisters all shared the same room most of the time when they were younger. Heck, the size of the home was as big as my living room is now, and my living measures 15x20 feet!!!!
Larry Kramer says to C.A. Tripp: "For the sake of humanity, please, gays need a role model." Pathetic reason to distort history.
$50 says this guy is banned within the next few months.
Why?
Another Dixiecrat bites the dust.
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