Was Abraham Lincoln gay? That's the central question of director Shaun Peterson's documentary Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln, but it's also a question that the documentary declares essentially unanswerable, since the modern concept of sexual identity didn't exist during Lincoln's time. There are a lot of experts making confident assertions that Lincoln had romantic and sexual relationships with men, but what exactly that means is never entirely clear.
Lover of Men opens with a disclaimer that states, "All of the letters featured in this film are authentic, and wherever possible, the filmmakers photographed the original locations where the following events occurred." That gives the movie a tone of defensiveness before anyone has even started speaking, and part of its mission is to rebut any skepticism over Lincoln's alleged homosexuality.
To that end, Peterson puts together an often dry PBS-style documentary, with commentators from venerable academic institutions like Harvard, Columbia and Brown, and his case largely sounds convincing. It's not, however, a particularly cinematic presentation, and there's little to be gleaned from Lover of Men that couldn't be conveyed in a concise magazine article or the "Sexuality of Abraham Lincoln" Wikipedia page. The movie provides an incomplete biography of Lincoln while emphasizing his connections with four particular men from different periods in his life.
Lover of Men spends most of its time on Lincoln's friendship with Joshua Speed, a man one expert deems "the love of his life." Lincoln and Speed lived together for four years during Lincoln's early legal and political career, sharing the same bed — a practice that the movie acknowledges was common at the time. But the film also touts it as evidence of their passionate romance. A lot of Lover of Men similarly tries to have things both ways, highlighting the intimacy and physical affection of same-sex friendships in the 19th century while claiming that Lincoln's close friendships must have gone beyond that.
That's not to say that Peterson's case is disingenuous, or that Lincoln's potential sexual fluidity isn't significant. "We worship at the altar of Abraham Lincoln," says one historian at the beginning of the movie, and if the man often considered the greatest American of all time is recognized as gay, that's meaningful for the present-day struggle for LGBTQ+ rights. The movie's final stretch clumsily attempts to bring that point home in a sequence that begins with a Google search for "sexuality 2024" and throws a lot of chaotic news snippets at the audience without coalescing into a clear message.
By that time, Lincoln has nearly been left behind, making the earlier focus on minutiae like single turns of phrase from various letters seem irrelevant. It's sometimes striking to hear what sound like ardent declarations of love from Lincoln to his male companions or bits of gossip that imply sexual relations, but they're all lines pulled from their larger context to bolster Peterson's argument. Even more specious is Peterson's copious use of cheesy, overstated re-enactments, full of soft lighting and longing looks through lace curtains.
An emo-looking young Lincoln is introduced sulking after his mother's death, and subsequent scenes come off like some kind of gay-themed historical Hallmark movie. Lincoln and Speed (who looks a bit like Harry Styles) demonstrate their "lust at first sight" by making eyes at each other while Speed licks his lips suggestively. Later, Speed lays his head on Lincoln's shoulder when they're in bed together. After introducing Lincoln to his future wife Mary Todd, Speed lurks in a doorway, seething with jealousy.
Those scenes have about as much believability as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and Peterson lacks the sense of humor of current Broadway sensation Cole Escola, whose hit play Oh, Mary! offers a more fictionalized but more entertaining queer take on Lincoln. There's no reason to doubt the sincerity of Lover of Men, but there's not much reason to head to a theater to see it, either.
Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln
