'That He is Reviving This Hoax is a Little Bizarre'

When it comes to the hardcore kook left, perpetrating hoaxes isn't really bizarre. It's pretty much standard operating procedure. See Andrew Sullivan and his obsession with Sarah Palin's uterus for just one example. We've seen this drivel from the angry gay left for so long it's more to be pitied than anything. If it makes them feel any better to make up stories that the founding fathers were gay, then let them have at it. Few believe this crap and it's just kind of sad anyone gives notice to their delusions.

Abraham Lincoln was not gay, no matter what playwright and AIDS activist Larry Kramer says -- according to Harold Holzer, who's written 35 books about our 16th president and the Civil War.

The subject came up in this week's New York magazine story about Kramer -- co-founder of Gay Men's Health Crisis and ACT UP -- and his 4,000-page manuscript, "The American People," which claims that George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Lewis and Clark and Lincoln were all homosexuals.

Kramer claimed that a diary and a stash of letters were found under the floorboards of a building where Lincoln had lived with his roommate and supposed lover, Joshua Speed.

But the article by Jesse Green noted, "Kramer isn't interested in proof, or facts." And Holzer, a historian who co-chaired this year's Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, told Page Six: "I had a private conversation with him [Kramer]. He admitted to me that he made the whole thing up. He said he made it up to raise consciousness."

Kramer evidently believes that Americans will be more supportive of gay rights if they think the Founding Fathers and other heroic historical figures were homosexuals.

"That he is reviving this hoax is a little bizarre," said Holzer, whose day job is p.r. for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "For half his life, Lincoln shared his bed with other guys. It was the custom. People didn't have so many beds."