Another Closeted Republican

I am convinced that Lincoln was bisexual. The article Dewey sent the link to -- Explaining a Presential Relationship bought up some very interesting points. Why is this such a issue in this day and age? Anway, thought you all would find the below of interest.
Robert L. Kincaid, Speed's biographer, describes the gay dialectic of their relationship: "Thus it was that Joshua Fry Speed and Abraham Lincoln passed the first hours in their bed together. Speed saw in Lincoln the rough-hewn product of the frontier. . . In Joshua Fry Speed, Abraham Lincoln saw a youth who was truly a 'gentleman to the manor born'" The two men shared the same bed for four years; both Speed and Lincoln always used the specific term "four years" in the way lovers mention anniversaries; they never said "several" or "many" but always used the specific number. They both had counted the years and held them sacred. Kincaid rightly concluded, "How much Speed contributed to the development of Lincoln in the four years they slept together is idle speculation, but their kindred hopes and ambitions fused into a unity and understanding which was never broken" (Kincaid, Robert L. 'Joshua Fry Speed, Lincoln's Most Intimate Friend.' Harrogate, Tennessee; Lincoln Memorial University, 1943)
If there were ever any quarrels or differences between Speed and Lincoln, they were not recorded. Their separation was brought on by events beyond their control. Speed's father died; he had to return to Louisville to help settle the estate and to comfort his mother. While there, Speed was pressured into marriage much against his wishes. Lincoln himself sought out a substitute in Mary Todd. Like Speed, she was from an upper-class Kentucky background, was well educated and was attracted to the tall man's prospects. Having lost Joshua and not yet ready for Mary, Lincoln cancelled the plans for marriage on January 1, 1841. Lincoln was thrown into the depths of despair, mourning for his Joshua who had left him. A friend wrote, "We have been very much distressed, on Mr. Lincoln's account; hearing that he had two Cat fits and a Duck fit since we left." Toward the end of the month, Lincoln himself wrote his law partner John Stuart, "I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell: I awfully forebode I shall not" (The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Basler, editor. 9 Vols, New Brunswick NJ; 1953 - 1955, Vol I, 229)
Lincoln recovered only after he had joined Speed that summer in Kentucky. Speed's biographer holds that "no incident in Lincoln's life was perhaps more enjoyable than his visit in the Speed home at 'Farmington' near Louisville in August and September, 1841" (Kincaid, 15) But when Speed married in February, 1842, Lincoln wrote from Springfield, "I feel somewhat jealous of both of you now; you will be so exclusively concerned for one another, that I shall be forgotten entirely" (The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Basler, editor. 9 Vols, New Brunswick NJ; 1953 - 1955, Vol I, 281)
Mother Speed gave the skeptic Lincoln a copy of the Bible to restore his spirits, but Lincoln never really recovered from the loss of his greatest love. As he mused in a letter to Speed about their friendship: "I regret to learn that you have resolved not to return to Illinois. I shall be very lonesome without you. How miserably things seem to be arranged in this world. If we have no friends, we have no pleasure; and if we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the loss" (Lincoln, I, 281) . Lincoln never forgot Speed; he wanted to name his first born after Joshua (Mary objected). After Lincoln was elected President, he saw Speed several times and found time for them to be alone together. In Chicago, the president=elect arranged for Mary to divert Speed's wife so they could slip off together to Speed's hotel room. "When the two men were alone, Lincoln stretched his long frame upon the bed, and," according to Speed's biographer, "Offered a post to Speed. . . But Speed declined" (Kincaid, 22-23). But their romance essentially ended January 1, 1841.
What more evidence could be called for in proving Joshua Speed and Abraham Lincoln were lovers? Lincoln's breakdown after his separation from Speed was always recognized by him as the lowest point in his life. Since Lincoln was a lawyer and Speed quite discreet, their physical relations never came into court. Indeed homosexuality seems not to have been a prosecuted crime in the circuits where Lincoln practiced. And snobbishness and pretentiousness more than lustiness led to social ostracism. Lincoln as a lawyer/politician and Speed as a storekeeper had finely honed skills for giving people what they wanted, folksy friendliness. Neither man was exclusively homosexual but that they were married and had sexual intercourse with a woman is not evidence they were not homosexual. Suppose something quite unlikely; the two men never had any "genital contact" during the four years they shared the same bed. Would that abstinence have made them any less homosexual? Speed was no casual pickup; he was Lincoln's type. Like Mary Todd Lincoln he was a Kentucky belle; was a couple classes above Lincoln; supported the tall man in his ambitions; and knew just how to soothe and relieve his depressions. What one biographer writes of Mary Todd was equally true of Joshua Speed: "She provided a marriage-long course in middle-class etiquette" (Baker, Jean H. 'Mary Tood Lincoln: A Biography', New York,: Norton, 1987, p132). The main difference between Mary and Joshua in their relations with Lincoln was that Lincoln tried to spend all his time with Speed while he was eager to get away from Mary.
Women were never Lincoln's first choice as love objects. Sarah Lincoln (His beloved stepmother) recalled that he never took much to the young girls. Indeed he seems to have been repelled from women as sexual partners. One grisly tale concerns Matilda, his stepsister, who had secretly followed him into the woods for a "good long chat and a wild romp." Matilda found Abe splitting wood and as a surprise jumped on his back whiel he was splitting wood. As she jumped he "accidentally" axed her in the thigh (some more genteel accounts say "ankle"). Lincoln then tore off the "tail of his undergarment" to stop the bleeding. Psychohistorian Charles Strozier writes that "the issue then became what to tell Sarah. Matilda was inclined to lie but Lincoln urged her to tell the truth. . . This ruthless honesty is ostensibly the point of the story. . . However, the sexual play and excitement between adolescent siblings unrelated by blood, living in a one-room cabin, seem the deeper meaning of the anecdote" (Strozier, Charles B. "Lincoln's Quest for Union: Public and Private Meanings.' New York; Basic Books, 1982, p22-23).
By contrast the story about Lincoln's visit to the prostitute is seldom told: he didn't have sex because he lacked the needed two dollars. But the humor does not disguise the fact that Lincoln avoided sex with a woman. One of his better documented courtings was with Mary Owens, a woman many believe he proposed to because she was sure to reject him. Owens later claimed Lincoln was "deficient in those little links that make up the chain of a woman's happiness" (Hertz, Emanuel, "The Hidden Lincoln from the Letters and Papers of Wiliam H. Harndon." New York; Viking Press, 1938 p303). And Mary Todd's sister stated quite definitively that "Lincoln was unable to talk to women and was not sufficiently educated in the female line to do so" (Baker, 89)
Lincoln married Mary Todd in November, 1842, and their marriage still offers room for historians to argue and novelists to imagine. Gore Vidal convincingly suggests that Lincoln had contracted syphilis which he passed on to Marry; three of their four children - Edward (1846 - 1850), Willie (1850 - 1862), and Tad (1853 - 1871) - all died prematurely and Mary herself suffered mental disorders (Vidal, passim). Mary Todd had several close, passionate relations with other women. While she had an informed and vigorous interest in politics, her husband progressively excluded her from his confidence. The early deaths of her children brought many nightmares; after the birth of Tad in 1853 she ceased having sexual relations with her husband and they soon maintained separate bedrooms.
After Joshua Speed, Lincoln himself never formed another intimate relationship with anyone (including Mary Todd), but he did pursue more casual male friendships. Between 1842 and 1861, he spent as much time on the road as at home. While other married circuit lawyers and politicians tried to go home as often as possible, Lincoln preferred sleeping overnight with the unmarried men. Thus he teamed up with Ward Hill Lamon, a husky twenty-year old beauty who went on to become his bodyguard. Once he slept four or five nights with Lamon at Lamon's house while Mary Todd was in New York City on a shopping trip. Lamon also provided for a beautiful group of Pennsylvania soldiers ("Bucktail Brigade") to guard Lincoln in the summer quarters in 1862. Margaret Leech writes, "He grew to like the Bucktails, especially Company K, with whose captain he became so friendly that he invited him to share his bed on autumn nights when Mrs. Lincoln was away from home" (Leech,Margaret. "Reveille In Washington" New York; Harper, 1941, p303). The captain got transferred by Company K continued on duty at the White House.