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I don't read The Village Voice so eagerly anymore as I did in my college days. (Back then their personal ads section was far, far more interesting with a whole load of sexual offers.) However, I am still in the habit of picking a copy up whenever I'm in Manhattan for the Counter Culture (restaurant review) section.
Besides, you can't exactly expect mainstream media such as NYT to print stuff like this:
That's where the simple categorizing of gay and straight turns troublesome. To the characters of Abraham Lincoln's Big Gay Dance Party (discussed in Part 1 of this essay last week), Lincoln's sexual preference is a cut-and-dried issue: Either he was gay (no matter how many children he and Mary Todd produced) or he absolutely wasn't (no matter how intense his affection for Joshua Speed). The notion that he may have cherished, embraced, and perhaps even come to orgasm with Speed, and still been content with Mary and the kids, doesn't fit in the contemporary schema. At best, it would simply make Lincoln a tormented bisexual, grudgingly fulfilling his husbandly duty while his heart yearned to romp with the handsome flatboatmen of his youth.
Outing Abe
Besides, you can't exactly expect mainstream media such as NYT to print stuff like this:
That's where the simple categorizing of gay and straight turns troublesome. To the characters of Abraham Lincoln's Big Gay Dance Party (discussed in Part 1 of this essay last week), Lincoln's sexual preference is a cut-and-dried issue: Either he was gay (no matter how many children he and Mary Todd produced) or he absolutely wasn't (no matter how intense his affection for Joshua Speed). The notion that he may have cherished, embraced, and perhaps even come to orgasm with Speed, and still been content with Mary and the kids, doesn't fit in the contemporary schema. At best, it would simply make Lincoln a tormented bisexual, grudgingly fulfilling his husbandly duty while his heart yearned to romp with the handsome flatboatmen of his youth.
Outing Abe
