Lincoln Country Aghast as Local Paper Prints Gay Allegation

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.