title: Love Stories: Sex between Men before Homosexuality
author: Jonathan Ned Katz
description: Forget about the Lincoln Bedroom scandals of the Clinton administration; the real scandal is who was in Lincoln's bed in 1837. This highly provocative, often startling reconsideration of 19th- and early 20th-century male-male sexual relationships begins with a detailed description of what Katz depicts as Abraham Lincoln's romantic, erotic relationship with Joshua Speed, the man with whom he shared a decades-long intimate friendship, as well as a bed for three years. While Speed himself wrote that "no two men were ever more intimate," Katz is not arguing that these two men were homosexual; Katz makes it clear that referring "to early nineteenth-century men's acts or desires as gay or straight, homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual" places "their behaviors and lusts within our sexual system, not theirs." Katz, whose groundbreaking 1976 Gay American History is foundational to contemporary gay and lesbian studies, has researched deeply and widely, uncovering astonishing materials: a relationship between John Stafford Fiske, the U.S. consul to Scotland in 1870, and famous British cross-dresser Ernest Boulton; the existence of the Slide, a male-male pick-up bar in Greenwich Village in the 1890s; romances between older sailors and their "chickens" during the Civil War. Walt Whitman, noted Harvard mathematician James Millis Peirce, writer Charles Warren Stoddard, English philosopher Edward Carpenter Katz finds these men engaged in deeply loving and erotic friendship with no specific labels of sexual orientation attached. All of this is described and shaped with enormous sensitivity and judiciousness. Written clearly, succinctly and free from postmodern jargon, Katz's arguments are strong and vibrant. By contextualizing "sexual, acts, sexual desires, sexual identities" in their historical periods, but never avoiding the specifics of sexual activity or emotional connection, he contributes surprising, even shocking, insights into how sexual and emotional relationships are constructed, as well as demonstrating the enormous diversity and malleability of human eroticism. </P><P>Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.</P>
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  “Love and Desire”
  Gay Love Stories
  Romance Short Story Anthology Volume Seven
   
   
   
   
   
  Jerry Cole
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  © 2019
  Jerry Cole
  
  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
  distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
  photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without
  the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief
  quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial
  uses permitted by copyright law.
   
  This book is intended for Adults (ages 18+) only. The contents may be
  offensive to some readers. It may contain graphic language, explicit sexual
  content, and adult situations. May contain scenes of unprotected sex. Please
  do not read this book if you are offended by content as mentioned above or if
  you are under the age of 18.
   
  Please educate yourself on safe sex practices before making potentially life-
  changing decisions about sex in real life. I