Unfortunately because homosexuality was/ is condemned people hid their sexuality. As a result many gay people left behind little to no evidence that they were gay.

Famous GAY leaders include Abraham Lincoln, Akhenaten, Alcibiades Cleiniou Scambonides, Alexander the Great, Anne of Great Britain, Aristogeiton, Aristomenes, Augustus, Basil II, David, Elisabeth I, Frederick II of Prussia, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick William Victor Albert, George III of the United Kingdom, Hadrian, Harmodius, James I of England, Julius Caesar, Mahmud of Ghazni, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Moctezuma II, Mongkut, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Napoleon I Bonaparte, Oda Nobunaga, Peter I of Russia, Richard I, Saladin, Sarah Churchill, Suleiman the Magnificent, Tiberius, Trajan, William III of England, and Wu of Han.

Important GAY military figures include Achilles, Babur, Bernard Montgomery, Charles George Gordon, Claude Louis Hector de Villars, Epaminondas, François-Eugène, Prince of Savoy-Carignan, Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, Garcilaso de la Vega, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, Hannibal, Joan of Arc, Louis II de Bourbon, Louis Joseph de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme, Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, Marquis de Lafayette, Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov, Philip II of Macedon, Pliny the Elder, Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, Saint George, Thomas Edward Lawrence, and Xenophon.
MORE INFO HERE
http://www.andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/fam00.html

“One historian argued that Lincoln couldn’t have been gay because he liked to drink and tell jokes.”

And you took this historian SERIOUSLY??

All I seem to do is write essays for my post grad at the moment and if I wrote ANYTHING like that, well, damn, I’d fail!!??

(I’m from the UK…maybe it’s different here..?)

Thank you.

I was about to REALLY disagree with you about exitentialists! But you figured your mistake!

One historian argued that Lincoln couldn’t have been gay because he liked to drink and tell jokes. In other words, he was all man. This is not only stereotypical and irrelevant, it’s contradicted by Speed’s comments about Lincoln’s femininity, in which Speed wrote, “Our Abe is a schoolgirl.” Historians may eventually be forced to concede about Lincoln what most have finally conceded about Plato.

What an interesting point you make.

I am one of those older people who, as a young child, remember my family sitting out in front of the house in Jackson Heights, Queens, NY (a mostly German and Jewish neighbor back then) in the evening after dinner and chatting with the neighbors on our block in the days before air-conditioning (they did have it in their bedroom), TV and the internet. It was called socializing and they knew everyone on the block and every detail of their lives.

In 1993, I retired and moved back to Florida where I spent a portion of my youth growing up. Sixteen years later, I am suffering not only from cultural deprivation and ignorance, I am also suffering from social deprivation as well. I am, quite literally, dying of alienation, red-neck ignorance, homophobia, loneliness and boredom. I hate the passivity of TV, so I do not watch it, preferring instead to spend my spare time on the Internet. But even that has it’s limitations…and lack of personal contact and warmth. The written word is very one-dimensional and feels more like “Virtual Reality”, as opposed to real human contact.

Two years ago, I inherited the old family house in Queens from my uncle who passed away there and I spent the summer of 2007 and the fall of 2008 making repairs, fixing it up and decorating the interior which is a long-time interest and love of mine.

A man who appreciates the out-of-doors, I would often eat my dinner out on the front veranda after I was through working on the house for the day and was pleasantly surprised to see that almost all of the neighbors (now mostly Colombian) are still sitting out in front of their houses and socializing and I love it. It was rare that I got to finish my dinner alone, as people would stop along the way to say hello and chat a bit before walking on.

In that period of time, I have made more friends on the block and in the immediate neighborhood than I have made in the some sixteen years I have been living in Florida. I have also received more coffee and cake invites and home-cooked dinner invitations in that short period than I have gotten in the past two years here in Florida, despite my being a person who often entertains guests in my my home.

An here is the real shocker, kiddies. All of my new found friends, who all know that I am gay btw, are gay themselves. They are all straight and I get more understanding, acceptance and support from them, than from the jealous, catty and bitchy old queens I know here in Florida.

As with most older people like myself, I do not like the cold, snow and ice and were it not for the abundant sunshine and warmth that Florida has to offer, I would seriously consider moving back there for good.

One thing is for sure. I will be heading back to Queens as soon as the weather permits and spending my summer with my new found friends and acquaintances, as I did in 2007 and part of 2008.

I’ve only been back in Florida since early November, and already I miss them. Incidentally, I hear from them more often, than I hear from the people I know here in Florida.

What is that telling me, I wonder? And they say that New Yorkers are “so cold”

NOT true at all. It’s a vicious lie.

As noted, there was no “gay” in Lincoln’s day, so there was no social role, no identity, to be claimed on the basis of same-sex attraction. Playing around was fine for young bachelors, but you were supposed to grow up, get married, and have children. And if relations were rocky with your wife? Well, marriage was a contract and social convention, not necessarily a love match. James Thurber wasn’t the only one to go on and on about the war between men and women. Putting down your wife was a comic convention until recently.

Actually, the best evidence I’ve seen that Lincoln was queer is his wife, Mary Todd. She’s always written up as being neurotic, borderline crazy, but she strikes me as a typical wife of a gay man. She expected to be fulfilled in marriage and valued as a woman, and her husband is dutiful but not that interested in her. He clings to her out of social need but she can’t touch him emotionally. He’s dependent on her, but neither is satisfied. I was encouraged to marry “in order to grow up” (a big theme in the 60s — bachelors were necessarily immature, it was thought). I was told that homosexuality was a habit that could be broken; if I’d just experience the “real thing,” I’d learn to desire THAT. My ex-wife and I thought we could make it on friendship if the sex didn’t work out, but we never bonded and she got sick of supporting me emotionally and getting little but respect and neediness in return. If we’d been stuck with each other, she might have become another Mary Todd, frustrated and angry.

It’s a straight illusion that gay men turn to one another as a substitute for women. That’s behind the thinking behind Leviticus and Paul’s letter to the Romans. Nope. When we give in to social pressure, or conventions, it’s the women who are the substitutes. It’s good that we’re beginning to be able to pair off in anyway that works for the people involved.

[The "a certain repertoire of acts, not a personality trait" definition is actually from the Constructionists' god Michel Foucault.]

My greatest problem with them is their “certainty” in the absence of indisputable empirical evidence. If they consistently included qualifying phrases such as, “I believe,” “It seems,” etc., as any honest anthropologist writing about long dead men and women would, I could respect the integrity if not, a priori, the substance of their different interpretations. But, over and over, at least in that which I’ve been able to stomach reading, they declare theirs to be omniscient and singular.

While Katz does use the reasonable qualifier “probably” in writing about Withers and Hammond ["...probably no penetrative prodding had occurred.” page 77], he closes the section with this, emphasis mine:

“Though an effeminate male was the IMAGINED object of Hammond’s desire, and sodomy the IMAGINED act, Withers CLEARLY distinguished this comical, fanciful sodomy from the serious, real thing.” page 78

So joking with someone about aspects of their sex life ipso facto means they don’t exist???

This is not “cultural thought in progress” but pseudo academic arrogance. Cultural understanding perhaps, but again, they repeatedly expound ex cathedra.

What we call OURSELVES is, of course, evolutionary and frequently changing, sometimes involving us individually and often simultaneously cross-purposeful.

I don’t care what an individual gay person calls him/herself privately, but I think “queer” as a public word when speaking about us collectively is counterproductive and, some evidence shows, irregardless of this blog’s title, and the ubiquity of the term in the limited gay media, most same gender attracted people in the US do NOT use the word to describe themselves and others.

What I’ve always found more fascinating, and it relates to how people in whatever age saw themselves, is the frequent mental gymnastics between acts and verbalization. Beyond your excellent example of practices vs. thought processes in India [because they are dependent upon not accepting the second party as the same gender] is a favorite story heard from a friend:

A close friend of his in college had had sex several times with another guy. All was fine until one day he attempted something they had not done before—he kissed the other guy…who immediately jumped back and said, “Are you QUEER????!!!!!”

Sigh — we’ve got a long way to go before socities comprehend that we are all simply humans seeking love, companionship, sex, etc. and that whether our proclivities are inate or chosen don’t really matter. I understand completely why we argue our sexuality is not a choice, I use the same argument for myself and I know it to be the truth for most people, but I can only truly speak for myself and if push comes to shove, I’m not concerned about how anyone else ended up where they did — interested in each person’s journey, but without judgment. As I always say, I’m really too busy trying to live my own life and really don’t have time or emotional need to stick my nose others’ business.

Leland – I’m not at your intellectual level, I’m sure, but is this just a case of cultural thought in progress? I just read an article in a recent Gay/Lesbian Literature Review that Indian Men (in India) do not consider themselves homosexual, bisexual or whatever because they are having sex with Musti (?) who are not considered by themselves or others to be “real men.”

Also, as to Katz being a “constructionist” I’ve always found him to be more than fair before labelling or even hinting anyone to be Gay. Or perhaps I don’t know what you mean by that word. Otherwise, thanks for providing the correct title of his book and a very well done post.

http://www.glbtq.com/literature/whitman_w.html

As for books, there is a great deal of fascinating information about Whitman, including the efforts of Carpenter and Symonds to get him to admit he was talking about male-male SEX and ROMANTIC love in “Love Stories: Sex between Men before Homosexuality,” by Jonathan Ned Katz.

I recommend it, however, only with this strong caveat: alas, Katz is a “constructionist” albeit one constantly disproving their own conceit that pre the 1870s, there was only “a certain repertoire of acts, not a personality trait.”

One’s eyes repeatedly cross as he simultaneously demonstrates, then denies, that, whatever it was called or not called, countless men did romantically love and want sex with other men [and women, women] identically to the way we do today.

I’ve yet to read their theories as to WHY in one decade anal sex with another man would be merely an “act” and the next decade become “a personality trait.” And what if we’re talking about the SAME two men who spanned both periods?

So what if most, but NOT all, also loved, or thought they did, women; sired children [I have lots of gay and lesbian friends who've done the same long before it became a fad], or, as in Whitman’s case, claimed they did.

In 1826, 22 yr. old Thomas Jefferson Withers wrote to his 19 yr. old friend James Hammond, “whether you yet have the extravagant delight of poking and punching a writhing Bedfellow with your long fleshen pole—the exquisite touches of which I have often had the honor of feeling? Let me say unto thee, that unless thou changest former habits in this particular, thou wilt be represented by every future chum as a nuisance . . . Sir, you roughen the downy slumbers of your Bedfellow—by such hostile lunges as you are in the habit of making at him—when he is least prepared for a defence against the crushing force of a Battering Ram.”

Donning his shiniest tin foil combination time machine and mind reading hat, Katz assures us that Withers [and Hammond in a similary phrased response] is “clearly” only joking.

And sometimes, the subjects do it themselves, as the instances of Walt Whitman originally writing “she” when he was actually talking about a “he”…or the reverse as the post mortem-discovered handwritten original of his poem “Once I Pass’d Through A Populous City” revealed that he changed “I remember only a man I casually met there, who detain’d me for love of me, Day by day and night by night we were together” to “I remember only a woman…,” etc. Even then, homophobic “scholars” would say, “Yes, but that doesn’t mean they boomshakalakaed.” Blah blah blah.

@minivangal – I’m always pissed when I find out someone is a scientologist. LOL

I don’t want Lincoln to be Gay if he wasn’t, but as someone else said here, it is just as arrogant and ignorant to automatically say he wasn’t.

And all the reading I’ve done said there’s at least a few things about Lincoln that point to his being at least Bi that can’t be explained away.

And nothing against Bi’s, but in prior centuries, men were expected to have children to prove their manliness, bring forth an heir to inherit all their wealth etc. So just because a man had kids in NO WAY automatically proves he was straight.

Did you read my other comment to you in another post btw?

For the record though, Byrne Fone’s book “homophobia” has a section about the “tales of the Arabian Nights.” I’m not quoting directly, but there is some mention about male/male sex and a woman in the story (says to the man) “I suspect you are one of those” (attracted to men.)

Not to mention all the ancient Greek philosphers’ discussions about same sex interactions/attractions.

What MIGHT be said though, until relatively recently simple survival was a horrendous ordeal for the majority of people – the concept of homosexuality as a distinct psychological type is a “new” idea. Which makes sense because psychology is fairly new.

The shorthand: if one had an ongoing sexual longing for someone of the same gender that person was AT LEAST bisexual and no different motivationally than tomorrow’s let alone today’s.

Ultimately, it is NOT a question of linguistics or group constructs [or identification} but epistemology. That is, how can we KNOW exactly what Lincoln or anyone else dead or living-but-unmet was/is feeling erotically or eroto-affectionately without their saying/writing it?

Those who say he definitely wasn’t are as guilty of arrogance as those who say he was.

The word “homosexuality” was not coined until the late 19th century, so attempting to unearth the notion of Lincoln’s sexuality would be a murky proposition at best. There were a few facts left out of this very nicely crafted essay. At 20, Lincold wrote a poem about a man marrying a man. And far more compelling than his sharing of a bed with Speed in his youth was the fact that much later, during Mary Lincoln Todd’s absences from the White House, a then President Lincoln shared his bed regularliy with a military officer of whom he was very fond. This, of course, led to a few whispers that were documented in letters and diarys of the time.

So life was very harsh, and people formed closer emotional attachments in general. People where I live now used to sit on their porches, I’m told by my elders, before they locked themselves into their houses with air conditioning in the summer, TV, & DVD’s and the internet….

Just a little food for thought.