Lincoln and Ann Rutledge

[LincolnToddFan]

Interesting. I don't know where I read this, but another author made an excellent point about the idea that AL might not have been heterosexual . He pointed out that if there had been even the slightest indication that he was somehow effeminate, his (many) political enemies would have taken the ball and run with it. They would have had a virtual field day with that sort of information.

Look at what Thomas Jefferson's political opponents did with the rumors that he had a slave mistress and children with her.. They were merciless, brutal.

With Lincoln, there was never even an idea planted in the anti-Lincoln press during his lifetime that his sexual orientation was anything other than heterodox. The fact that he was not a skirt chaser and was awkward with the ladies does not automatically mean he was gay. So instead, his enemies got mileage out of rumors that he was illegitimate or even-gasp! racially mixed.

Lincoln was in love with the world of ideas. His intellect and his imagination are what seemed to drive him. In our own time, when everything and everyone is defined by how they come across sexually, it is even more difficult than usual to understand a man like Abraham Lincoln.

None of us can know for sure, but I don't believe he was gay. The evidence simply isn't there.