I have to say I’ve been surprised by my own reaction to the Lincoln-was-gay thesis: I don’t care very much. I haven’t read the book, but I take Rick and others at their word that the evidence certainly passes a certain threshhold to make Lincoln’s behavior curious and the assertion that Lincoln had bi- or homo-sexual tendencies not intellectually outrageous. But having read Victor Davis Hanson’s piece about Alexander the Great’s homosexual exploits and Oliver Stone’s treatment of same, I’m not sure you can make very much hay out of any of this one way or the other.

The core assumption is that if it were proved Lincoln’s gay it would overturn …. something. But I’m just not sure what it would overturn. I know that there are people out there who think homosexuality is of itself evil and that homosexuals are evil. But that’s not exactly where the debate is. The debate is that homosexuality is different than heterosexuality in significant ways and how that difference should be accomodated in society. So it’s a bit of stolen base to say “If Lincoln was gay, that proves gays aren’t evil” or that it “proves gays can be great citizens and leaders.” It may or may not prove that, but such proof wouldn’t change the argument about whether or not marriage can mean the joining of a man and a man.

If Lincoln did gay stuff in private, he did not do it in public. He got married, had kids and never for a moment advocated that society or government should create social space for homosexuals. Indeed, if one were so inclined, one could take the available evidence and say “See! Lincoln’s gayness proves that if homosexuals just stay in the closet, they can achieve great things!”

Again, I just haven’t followed this that much but I just can’t see how proving Lincoln was gay changes our understanding about how to organize society any more than declaring Alexander the Great was gay illuminates our understanding of today or of the past. In the current debates about homosexuality, “homosexual” is a legal-political designation that would have seemed completely bizarre to Lincoln and his contemporaries.