‘Lover of Men’ explores America’s greatest president. (Image courtesy of Special Occason Studios)
It’s reasonable to assume, if you’re someone with an interest in “hidden” queer history, that you are already aware of the speculation that Abraham Lincoln might have been gay, or at least bisexual.
Those labels didn’t exist in his time, but the 16th POTUS left a trail of eyebrow-raising same-sex relationships, nonetheless, which many scholars consider as evidence that he was likely a member of what we now call the LGBTQ community.
The discussion around Lincoln’s sexuality has always been broadly drawn and ambiguously cloaked by 19th-century social norms (which [spoiler alert] were not quite as Puritanical as we might believe). Conclusions must be drawn by inference, so it’s no surprise that many historians tend to be wary of projecting modern-day interpretations on a past era.
Such experts warn against relying on a between-the-lines reading of “official” history to provide factual certainty; by that standard, whatever the implications might suggest, there’s simply no way to prove anything, one way or another, and that’s the end of the story.
Others, however, are not so eager to close the discussion; that’s why the creators of “Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln” – a new documentary conveniently timed for release mere months ahead of what might, when it comes to the subject of LGBTQ acceptance and equality, be our most crucial election so far – decided to step in and set the record (if you’ll pardon the expression) straight.
Directed by Shaun Peterson – who co-wrote alongside Joshua Koffman, Grace Leeson, and Robert Rosenheck – and unapologetically committed to piercing the opacity of a biography that contains too many “red flags” to ignore, it’s a documentary that eschews neutrality to make a case for claiming “Honest Abe” as the most prominent LGBTQ hero in the Great American Story. Unfolded by expert historians – both queer and otherwise – as an intimate portrait of a profoundly public figure, it charts Lincoln’s life through a lens trained on private experience, and goes beyond that to frame the much-beloved president’s growth and transformation into one of the world’s most significant leaders as a probable consequence of the “friendships” he experienced with the men who were his closest companions during different periods of his life.
Most of the attention is directed, unsurprisingly, at Joshua Speed, the handsome shopkeeper with whom, for four years of his young manhood, Lincoln shared a bed as a matter of “convenience” – despite offers of free and private lodgings elsewhere and a successful law practice that would have allowed him to buy a bed of his own and a house in which to put it. Casting Speed as “the love of Lincoln’s life,” it positions him (through plentiful historical documentation) as the man who helped the future president find his mojo; even so, it goes on to present evidence supporting less well-known male companions as catalysts to Lincoln’s maturation both as a commander-in-chief and a human being.
We won’t go into much detail here; the movie does a better job of illuminating the record than we ever could – and it does so not by relying solely on the speculation of possibly biased commentators, but by presenting “the receipts” as they appear in the indisputable (yet under-discussed) historical record. Gleaned from private correspondences and interviews with Lincoln’s primary contemporary biographer, these details reveal (among other things) the future president’s ambivalence toward women, the questionable context in which Lincoln bedded down with his various male companions, and the emotional bond he had with each of them that seemed to overshadow the one he shared with his eventual first lady, Mary Todd Lincoln – who, at least through the lens cast upon her here, was probably more in love with the idea of being married to a president than she was to the president she married.
No, there’s no “smoking gun” (again, pardon the expression) to be found by the erudite scholars who expound upon the persuasively numerous clues contained in Lincoln’s biography during the course of the film. There are, however, plenty of tell-tale powder burns. By exploring the nuance behind the many documented-but-veiled suggestions about the martyred president’s relationships, both male and female, this varied assortment of historians highlights the points that strike a familiar chord for queer people even if they’re likely to go unconsidered by anyone else. By the end, “Lover of Men” has expertly pleaded its case and rested it, relying on the weight and volume of its circumstantial evidence to satisfy any reasonable doubt.
The final verdict, of course, remains up to the individual viewer, and it unfortunately goes without saying that a good many will be watching with intent to discredit any hint of queerness within Lincoln’s biography, if they even watch it at all. Yet while it’s easy to reject an idea when you’ve already made up your mind that it’s false, it’s just as easy to accept one that you want to be true; and though the historians of Peterson’s smart and sassy movie carry an undeniable weight of credibility in their arguments, what remains indisputably accurate is that there is no way to know with certainty if our most-revered president was shaded with the “lavender” referenced by his poetic biographer Carl Sandburg to describe his nature in a later-prudently deleted passage of prose.
That’s perfectly all right, though. “Lover of Men” never tries to claim, unequivocally, that Lincoln belonged in the LGBTQ rainbow, only that the likely probability that he did is worthy of consideration. Further, it goes on to highlight the open-minded empathy that allowed him to pivot his viewpoint in ways that are typically unthinkable in politics; the evolution it charts for Lincoln from gifted country bumpkin to fully aware (dare we say “woke”?) humanitarian leader makes him an ideological model that feels crucial today. That having to suppress his true nature may have shaped the values and ideals that would ultimately help him to change the world makes the film’s arguments even more persuasive; and if its re-enactments of encounters between Lincoln and his alleged male lovers read as a little too modern to be true, they certainly convey a more plausible interpretation than can be found in any surface reading of the scrupulously polite language describing such events in the historic record.
Reinforced by filmed footage of the now-historically preserved sites (the smallness of an old shared cot speaks volumes) where Lincoln’s intimate life took place, these fancifully anachronistic translations of 19th-century queer courtship into something instantly recognizable to modern queer viewers succeed in making it difficult to cling to a denial that this particular American icon might have been queer – unless you are very deeply invested, for whatever reason, in doing so.
Sadly, that last point means a great many people will probably reject this passionately earnest piece of info-tainment sight unseen; but for those who don’t, it offers an intelligent and reasonable perspective on one of our most important national icons that can only increase his relevance in an age almost as divisive as the one over which he was destined to preside.
In other words, don’t miss it.
