[Newspoetry] Lincoln Outed!

[Mike Lehman]

I wonder why we haven't seen this story in the News-Gazette?  They
always seem to be connisueiers of all thing "Abe."
Mike Lehman

Lincoln Country Aghast as Local Paper Prints Gay
              Allegation
                 Activist claims he's seen the diary of the 16th
president's homosexual lover.
              Historians deride the idea as Springfield fumes.
              By STEPHANIE SIMON, Times Staff Writer

SPRINGFIELD, Ill.--The newspaper here runs a picture of Abraham Lincoln
on its masthead, right next to the list of top editors. Above the
publisher's name is a quote from Old Abe himself, praising the paper as
"always my friend."

        Loyalty to Lincoln clearly ranks high here.Which is why many
readers saw the newspaper's recent banner headline as a betrayal.
Stretched across the top of the Sunday front page, the headline read:
"Writer asserts proof Lincoln was gay."  Many readers were horrified.
Although most hastened to say they had nothing against homosexuals, it
was clear they didn't take this new view of Lincoln as a compliment. The
State Journal-Register was irresponsible, they railed, to have printed
such slander. It was appalling. Outrageous. Just plain old mean. "Honest
Abe must be spinning in his Oak
Ridge grave," one reader wrote the editor, "wondering what he did
to Springfield to make them shame him in this manner."

        To back up for a minute: Lincoln is more than Springfield's
favorite son. He's an icon here. And an industry. He made his name as a
lawyer here, then made it again as a politician. It was here that he
reared his family. Here that he received word of his election to the
presidency. And it's here that half a
million tourists a year come to see Lincoln's home, law office and tomb.

"We consider Abe our guy," said Barry Locher, the Journal-Register's
managing editor. "It's like, 'Don't be messing with Abe.' "  Locher has
since apologized, in print, for playing the story so big--and for
juxtaposing the words "Lincoln" and "gay" in a headline. Still, he
insists, the article was
appropriate. Springfield, of all places, he says, should know what
people are
saying about Abe.

         No serious scholar has, so far, put forth any proof that
Lincoln
was homosexual. But gay activist Larry Kramer claims to have uncovered
striking new evidence: the diary of Joshua Speed, Lincoln's most
intimate friend and his longtime bedmate. Historians have long known
that Lincoln and Speed shared a bed for four years. Many men of that era
did. Mattresses were expensive; Lincoln, in debt, had no money to buy
one. Then, too, it
was cold in many frontier homes. Men bunked together for warmth.
So most scholars have found nothing suggestive in the two friends
sleeping side by side.

               Kramer, however, claims that Speed's diary details a
sexual relationship. He won't show the diary to anyone.  In fact, he
says, it's not his to show, because it belongs to a private collector in
Iowa. But at a recent gay and lesbian conference, Kramer did read some
quotations that he said came from the diary. Among them:  "[Lincoln]
often kisses me when I tease him,
often to shut me up.  He would grab me by his long arms and hug and
hug." In another passage, Speed allegedly wrote that Lincoln craved hugs
and  kisses: "Yes, our Abe is like a schoolgirl."

               Lincoln scholars have always described our 16th president
as
uneasy around women. And Lincoln's own letters make clear that he
approached marriage with much trepidation. In fact, he and Speed traded
epistolary, it-won't-be-that-bad pep talks as their respective weddings
neared. "I don't think anyone would deny that you find [in Lincoln] an
ambivalence and awkwardness toward women," said Tom Schwartz, Illinois'
state historian. "Whether you could make the case that he experienced
not only homosexual attraction but also had homosexual partners is
something else."

                             Tantalizing Rumors of Letters

              If genuine, Speed's diary could go a long way toward
settling
that question. And scholars say it's possible such a manuscript exists.
Although Lincoln is among the most written-about figures in the world,
historians have not uncovered all the documents that relate to him.
Rumors have circulated among Lincoln buffs for years that long-lost
letters from Speed to Lincoln are out there somewhere, tucked away in a
private collection.  Still, most historians are skeptical about
Kramer's claim to have found Speed's diary. Kramer, they point out, is
not a scholar, but a playwright and activist with a definite agenda. And
he's been so mysterious about the source of his bombshell that it's
impossible for anyone to verify.  "I'm very, very dubious that this is a
serious report," said Douglas Wilson, author of "Honor's Voice: The
Transformation of Abraham Lincoln."  As for Lincoln's sexuality, Wilson
asserts it's "very, very unlikely he was gay.

               Certainly, no one at the time thought Lincoln's
relationship with Speed was in any way remarkable, although it was
widely known that they bunked together. "Politics at the time was very
personal and very rough," Wilson explained. "If there had been the
slightest suggestion that there was anything odd in their relationship,
the Democrats would not have hesitated to use it," since both Lincoln
and Speed were prominent Whigs. Given those doubts--plus indications
that Lincoln fell in love with at least two women before marrying Mary
Todd--many Springfield residents were furious that the local paper gave
Kramer's claim any ink.  "There were no facts presented," complained
bookstore owner John Paul. "It had all the hallmarks of yellow
journalism."  Cozying with her husband on a wooden swing outside their
little bed-and-breakfast, Mary Jane Maslouski agreed.
"It was uncalled-for," she said. "I think it'll hurt Springfield
[tourism]."

            The mere suggestion that she might shun Springfield if it
turned
out that Lincoln was gay flummoxed tourist Carol Dreyer of Urbana, Ill.
"Nothing anyone could write, say, or find out about him would exclude me
from loving him as the president of our nation," she said as she paid
respects to the Lincoln family tomb. "He was a wonderful man. Being gay
wouldn't make a difference."

                             'I Would Lose a Lot of Respect for the Man'

            Others strolling Springfield's Lincoln sites, however, said
they
might not be so eager to spend their vacations paying homage to a
homosexual president. "It would definitely be a turnoff," said
Missouri factory worker Dwight Kiefer, in town for a Harley-Davidson
rally. "I would lose a lot of respect for the man."  Such responses
infuriate Kramer.
"What troubles me the most," he said, "is people's inability to conceive
of the possibility of otherness. It just makes me despair."

           Springfield's reaction annoys him so much, he said, that he
may not even publish his work on Lincoln's sexuality, which he had been
planning to submit to magazines this fall and eventually compile into a
book.  Kramer talks, however, as though it's his duty to convince a
dubious America that some of our most revered leaders have been gay.
Abraham Lincoln--the Great Emancipator, the founder of the Republican
Party, the man who talked of "malice toward none [and] charity for
all"--is only the beginning.

             "There's evidence that George Washington was gay," Kramer
said. "There's evidence that Gen. [George] Custer was gay. There's
evidence that, I forget which one, [Meriwether] Lewis or [William]
Clark, was gay. This is all going to come out." And so it should, he
added: "If we get accepted for our contributions to this world that are
noble, maybe then we won't be treated" shabbily.

 Copyright Los Angeles Times