Playwright, author and AIDS activist Larry Kramer has expounded on his new book, The American People: Volume 1: A Search for My Heart, on Sirius Radio. It’s billed as “a novel” but Kramer says is a “history,” and which, as per usual with Kramer, is creating some controversy. He describes George Washington as a man who had sex with men and writes the same of Alexander Hamilton, who “was in love with George,” Ben Franklin, Andrew Jackson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and “the most powerful gay man” in American history, J. Edgar Hoover. Jamestown was a HOTBED of gay sex, Kramer writes, partly because it only included men for years. Not only did Abraham Lincoln have intimate affairs with men – a thesis that was seen as far-fetched a number of years ago, but which more historians now support – but, Kramer writes, Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth was queer, too, and Joshua Speed, thought to be Lincoln’s lover, was a “hustler” as well as “gift” from Booth. Today is the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s death. Kramer said:
“In the case of Washington, he was a big queen, basically. He decorated everything. He designed all the uniforms, the buttons. The correspondence exists with all the dealers he dealt with in England to make everything. And then there was a man called Baron von Steuben, who was German, who designed all the maneuvers for all the troops of all the great armies in Europe. And he kept getting thrown out after he made the armies real – like Rockettes [laughs]. He got kicked out and he came to George. And he and George hit it off like nobody’s business.
George put him to work right away and they designed all these maneuvers and it was like putting on show. That’s for starters. And there’s no question, that Alex [Alexander Hamilton], really – whether it was a father/son thing – that Alex was very much in love with him. And Alex Hamilton was very handsome. And George was much older. And that’s been written about. There was a mutual attraction between them… Hamilton also had a young lover, a fellow officer, John Laurens is his name. There were letters between the two. Even the [Ron] Churnow book mentions that.”
Juicy! True or not, Pat Robertson is planning a fresh rant. (via Huffington Post)
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