GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

October 7, 2011

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Moment

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pages could tell one to expect it from them. Cullen's repression is almost palpable, as is New's artistic petulance. Together, they are sex on wheels, and if either of them is heterosexual, they hid it incredibly well. Some people thought Ewan McGregor and Jim Carrey were a little too demonstrative in I Love You Phillip Morris, but Cullen and New make that movie seem like a recruiting

Buchanan

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smoking gun that proves it one way or the other, I would definitely encourage our staff to share it with the public."

But, he said Ann Coleman's portrait no longer is displayed at Wheatland.

The tours focus mainly on the mansion's décor and activities that took place there during the later years of Buchanan's life, he added.

Wheatland also has about 45 volunteer tour guides, and to Clarke's knowledge, none of the guides is openly gay.

"The volunteer guides who we train to share the history of James Buchanan's life and times are directed to take a neutral stance regarding [his] sexual preference," Clarke said.

But Clarke said he wouldn't object if a volunteer offered a personal opinion that Buchanan was gay, if asked by a visitor.

"When you have 50 minutes to take people through a nine-room house, there's only so much you can discuss,' Clarke said. "But if the question is raised, the guide may express a personal opinion."

Loewen noted that many historians rate Buchanan as one of the worst U.S.

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film for the abstinence movement. They kiss wetly and noisily, they simulate sex well enough that one begins to think it's a sequel to Shortbus.

In short, they have a lot of sex, and it's incredibly passionate.

Here's hoping to more great things from the director and his two actors. If there is any justice in the film world, we'll be seeing much more of them in the coming

years.

presidents. Buchanan was part of the pro-slavery wing of the Democratic Party, and corruption plagued his administration.

But Loewen said those flaws shouldn't discourage members of the LGBT community from acknowledging Buchanan's status as a gay man.

"Lots of gay people have been exemplary," he said. "Let's look at Walt Whitman. For my money, he's the best poet in the history of the country. But we also have to acknowledge the failures. If we only admit that really great people are gay, what kind of history is that? And how is that believable? It's ridiculous. We have to tell it like it was."

As a heterosexual male, Loewen added, he has no hidden agenda in outing Buchanan.

"I'm not gay," Loewen said. “I don't run around trying to find gay folks or black folks underneath every rock. But I'm not going to ignore clear evidence." ♡

Timothy Cwiek has written for Philadelphia Gay News since the late 1970s.

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King

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postmaster general while Buchanan was president, reportedly referred to King as Buchanan's "wife."

Baker reports in her Buchanan biography that King's and Buchanan's nieces reportedly destroyed their uncles' correspondence with each other, fueling speculation that the two men were in a gay relationship that their families wanted to conceal.

In one letter that survived, Buchanan expressed sadness over King's departure from his house in 1844 to become the U.S. envoy to France.

"I am now solitary and alone, having no companion in the house with me," Buchanan wrote. "I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them."

King's relationship with Buchanan, who was from Pennsylvania, could have been a factor in Buchanan's sympathy for the South during Buchanan's tenure as a senator and later as president from 1857-61.

Most accounts by historians of King's political career portray him as a moderate southerner who supported slavery while emerging as a strong unionist. King voiced opposition in the Senate to calls by some of his fellow southerners for the South to secede from the United States during the tense decade prior to the Civil War.

"From such a calamity may God in His mercy deliver us," King wrote in expressing opposition to the growing calls for secession.

King was born in 1786 in Sampson County, N.C., to a family of wealthy planters. His father owned more than two dozen slaves, the Office of the Senate Historian reports in its biography of King.

It says King attended an elite preparatory school before attending the University of North Carolina, where he studied law. Following a legal apprenticeship, he was admitted to the state bar in 1805 and began a legal practice. He served in the North Carolina Legislature from 1808-09 and won election in 1810 to the U.S. House and began serving as a representative in 1811 at age 25.

He resigned from the House in 1816 to enter the world of diplomacy by taking a job as legation secretary for William Pinkney, who was appointed by President James Monroe as U.S. minister to Russia in St. Petersburg. King returned to the U.S. in 1818, when he moved from North Carolina to the territory of Alabama, becoming one of the leaders of the Alabama statehood movement.

The Senate historian's biography says King purchased 750 acres of land in Alabama and established a plantation. He later joined others to form a land company that founded the town of Selma, which King reportedly named. In December 1819, he became one of Alabama's first two U.S. senators.

As a moderate Democrat, King became an early supporter of Andrew Jackson's quest to become president, the Senate biography says. It quotes an unnamed critic of King as describing him as a "tall, prim, wig-topped mediocrity," noting that King wore a wig "long after such coverings had gone out of fashion."

The biography quotes a fellow senator as having this to say about King: "He was distinguished by the scrupulous correctness of his conduct. He was remarkable for his quiet and unobtrusive, but active practical usefulness as a legislator... To his honor be it spoken, he never vexed the ear of the Senate with ill-timed, tedious or unnecessary debate."

The Encyclopedia of Alabama reports in a 2003 article that rumors circulating in Washington about King's sexual orientation increased as his close friendship with Buchanan became widely known.

"Neither man ever married, and by 1836 they were sharing a residence in Washington," the encyclopedia article says. "Any negative reactions to their relationship appear to have had little effect, and the men continued with their living arrangement and their work as legislators."

By 1840, newspapers in Alabama supportive of the Democratic Party, of which King was a prominent member, promoted King as a vice-presidential running mate for

incumbent President Martin Van Buren. Although King received little support outside Alabama for the nomination, he continued to position himself behind the scenes as a possible vice-presidential candidate for the next two decades, the Alabama encyclopedia reports.

The Senate biography of King says President John Tyler interrupted King's vicepresidential ambitions in 1844 when he nominated him to become U.S. minister to France, and the Senate quickly confirmed the nomination by a lopsided margin.

The bio says King succeeded in his main mission to persuade France not to oppose U.S. plans to annex Texas, which the U.S. acquired after the Mexican-American War.

King returned to the Senate in 1848, two years after completing his service in France. In July 1850, King became the de facto U.S. vice president when President Zachary Taylor died in office and Vice President Millard Fillmore became president, leaving the office of vice president vacant.

King's Senate colleagues responded by unanimously selecting him as president pro tempore of the Senate, which normally would have placed him third in line to become president. With the vice president's post vacant, King emerged as first in line to become president if Fillmore were to die in office.

In 1852, after years of vying for the vicepresidential nomination, the constellations appeared to be in perfect alignment with Democratic Party politics for King's longtime dream. After nominating Franklin Pierce for president on the 49th ballot, the Democratic Convention, convening in Baltimore, nominated King as Pierce's running mate. In the ensuing months, King campaigned aggressively for the Pierce-King ticket, playing some role in Pierce's victory in November 1852.

But biographers report that King's coughing spells became increasingly frequent and painful, leading to a diagnosis of tuberculosis. By December 1852, King described himself to friends as "looking like a skeleton," the Senate biography reports. Later that month he resigned from the Senate and made arrangements, at the advice of his doctor, to spend the winter in Cuba, where the warm, tropical climate would hopefully help him regain his health.

In early February 1853, King realized his condition was getting worse and he would not be well enough to travel to Washington in time for the March 4 inauguration ceremony.

Upon learning of King's deteriorating health, Congress took the unusual step of passing a law allowing him to take the oath of office for vice president on foreign soil.

"On March 24, 1853, near Matanzas, a seaport town 60 miles from Havana, the gravely ill statesman, too feeble to stand unaided, became the nation's 13th vice president," his Senate biography says.

King boarded a ship to return to the U.S. in April 1853 and arrived home at his Alabama plantation on April 17. He died one day later at age 67.

David Durham, a University of Alabama professor of law and history, said in a Sept. 9 interview that it remains an open question whether King was gay. Durham said it's also uncertain but a strong possibility that King played a role in shaping Buchanan's policies and views on the issue of slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War.

"I don't think anybody can prove it one way or the other,” he said in discussing King's sexual orientation.

"A lot of the speculation comes from misinterpreting, I think, 19th century lifestyles, where men commonly slept in the same bed and thought nothing of it," Durham said. "And the kind of terms of affection used in letters and correspondence between males-in our society now it's like, umm, that's very interesting. But they thought nothing of it and it didn't mean there was some kind of romantic attachment," he said. "But that's not to say that there wasn't," Durham added.

Lou Chibbaro Jr. is senior news reporter for the Washington Blade.