Which us president was gay
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He was miserable in the marriage. By the 1830s, both men had been pulled into the political orbit of Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party. Buchanan and his Wife,” one tongue wagged. She’s believed to have had serious psychological problems. Although he came from the North, Buchanan saw that the viability of the Democratic Party depended on the continuance of the South’s slave-driven economy.
After Buchanan’s death in 1868, his niece, Harriet Lane Johnston, who played the part of first lady in Buchanan’s White House, corresponded with Ellis about retrieving their uncles’ correspondence from Alabama.
More than 60 personal letters still survive, including several that contain expressions of the most intimate kind.
And with that, Eisenhower fills my “the lady doth protest too much” slot on this list.
4 | George Washington
Historians say he always seemed to value his bonds with men — whether during war or in politics — than he did with his wife. For his lifelong loyalty to the party and to balance the ticket, he was selected as the vice-presidential running mate under Franklin Pierce in 1852.
Buchanan and King shared one other essential quality in addition to their political identification.
One: His gorgeous mutton chops. Washington society began to take notice, too. She beat him. Many commentators at the time remarked on the pair’s closeness, with Andrew Jackson referring to them as “Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy”.
2. We don’t need much evidence of that, the evidence is all over the place. Still, he spent the remainder of his days bemoaning a “wayward heart” that could not love again.
Each of these two middle-aged bachelor Democrats, Buchanan and King, had what the other lacked.
(Mostly Buchanan though.)
Considering how much people love to speculate on who might and might not be gay — I think it’s replaced baseball and obesity as America’s favorite pastime — I was surprised I couldn’t find a single list out about the potential closeted homosexuality of the U.S.
presidents.
So I’m stepping in to fill the void. This one’s a bit different. That being said, a book called Jack and Lem dug deep into his lifelong friendship with a gay man named Lem Billings… and at least threw some iffiness into the mix. Critics labeled Buchanan a “doughface” (a northern man with southern principles), but he pressed onward, quietly building support across the country in the hopes of one day rising to the presidency.
He says he used Toni Morrison standards (filling “every trope”). Was each man “gay,” or something else? In a “confidential” letter to future first lady Sarah Polk, Brown savaged Buchanan and “his better half,” writing: “Mr. Simply put, the characterization underscores a powerful force at work in historical scholarship: the search for a usable queer past.
The year was 1834, and Buchanan and King were serving in the United States Senate.
Could he have picked her because she came from a high-class, wealthy, connected family and that was his primary concern in a woman — not the love/sex/”You complete me” nonsense?
1 | James Buchanan
So the speculation on the 10 presidents listed until now has been anywhere from syllogistic at best to flat-out jokes at worst.
An important exception is a singular letter from Buchanan written to Cornelia Van Ness Roosevelt, wife of former congressman John J. Roosevelt of New York City. Simply put, friendships provided the political glue that bound together a nation on the precipice of secession.
This understanding of male friendship pays close attention to the historical context of the time, an exercise that requires one to read the sources judiciously.