Of course, it’s impossible to know for sure if any former U.S. presidents were gay.
However, our only bachelor president, James Buchanan, had that reputation in his lifetime.
His longtime roommate, Senator and later Vice President William Rufus De Vane King of Alabama, also never married.
According to historians, the two had an inseparable relationship for nearly 25 years, until King’s death, in fact, King was called “Buchanan’s better half,” “James’s wife,” and “Miss Nancy” by some of his colleagues.
When the two were temporarily separated after King was appointed minister to France in 1844, King wrote Buchanan,
“I am selfish enough to hope you will not be able to procure an associate who will cause you to feel no regret at our separation.”
Buchanan wrote to a friend,
“I am now ‘solitary and alone,’ having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.”
But that’s not all.
Hang onto your stovepipe hats, because a few rogue historians also claim that Abraham Lincoln was homoerotically involved with lifelong friend Joshua Speed.
They shared private thoughts, fears, desires, and a bed for four years.
Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg wrote that their relationship had “a streak of lavender and spots soft as May violets.”
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