Was Abraham Lincoln gay?

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NEW YORK (AFP) - A new biography of Abraham Lincoln is making headlines with its assertion that the romantic leanings of the renowned 16th president of the United States were primarily homosexual.

"The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln," by C.A. Tripp, has ruffled more than a few feathers among biographers, historians and readers alike by focusing on an issue that has been a subject of scholarly debate for years.

While other biographers have tended to skirt the question of Lincoln's sexuality, Tripp's tome tackles it head-on, suggesting Lincoln had physically intimate relations with a succession of men before and during his troubled marriage to Mary Todd.

While in his late 20s, Lincoln shared a bed with his close friend Joshua Speed for four years and, Tripp asserts, later did the same with a presidential bodyguard whenever his wife was away.

Critics of Tripp's book have pointed out that men sharing beds was common practise in the 1800s, often on a practical level, due to insufficient heating and a lack of comfortable mattresses.

Tripp, who died in May 2003, shortly after finishing the book's manuscript, spent 10 years researching his subject.

A former researcher for sex studies pioneer Alfred Kinsey, Tripp stops short of declaring Lincoln an active homosexual, but employs a measurement of sexuality developed by Kinsey to argue that he was primarily homosexual in orientation while capable of having sexual relations with women.

Tripp began the project with a co-author, Philip Nobile, but the two men later had a falling out, and Nobile has since accused his former colleague of plagiarising material and fabricating evidence of Lincoln's homosexuality.

Reviews of the book have been mixed, with several prominent critics accusing Tripp of applying modern sexual mores to 19th-century behavior and leaping to conclusions.

"Tripp can lay out a case, but his discussion of its implications is so erratic that the reader is often left on his own," The New York Times said.