As Congress at last debates the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, we might ask ourselves: “What if George Washington was gay?”
As Congress at last debates the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, we might ask ourselves: “What if George Washington was gay?”
The question is posed by “Thomas Paine’s” shocking new PASSIONS OF THE POTSMOKING PATRIOTS (www.harveywasserman.com).
The answer, of course, is that---under today’s laws---he would have been drummed out of the Revolutionary Army, and we might still be a colony of the King.
Because he “could not tell a lie,” a gay General Washington would have been obliged to turn himself in. Under current policy, the Continental Congress would have sent him packing back to Mt. Vernon.
Like many gays in today’s military, Washington was irreplaceable. Possessed of an iron will and Vesuvian temper, it’s hard to imagine anyone else holding the ragtag Revolutionary army together. His 1776 crossing of the Delaware for a surprise attack on the mercenary Hessians in Trenton was one of the great military strokes in all history.
But was Washington gay?
For years rumors have swirled that Abraham Lincoln was gay, largely because of a lengthy stay in bed with another man. But in an era of limited accommodations, such sharing was common. Benjamin Franklin and John Adams once slept together while on a diplomatic mission in Europe. The two men despised each other and it was probably the longest night of both their lives.
The President prior to Lincoln---James Buchanan---was a bachelor with a long-time live-in “boyfriend.” Called “Aunt Nancy” by the bigoted Andrew Jackson, Buchanan is the likeliest gay to occupy the White House.
While still in his twenties, George Washington married the beautiful Martha Dandrige Custis. The widow of an extremely wealthy planter, Martha made George the richest man in America. There is evidence he left a more impassioned (female) lover for just that reason.
George apparently never fathered a child. A childhood bout with Scarlet Fever may have rendered him sterile. Later he complained in a letter to a friend that there was “not much fire between the sheets” with Martha.
Washington did form passionate relationships with his fellow warriors. He developed a fierce loyalty to his brilliant aide de camp Alexander Hamilton, a Jamaican of uncertain parentage. As Treasury Secretary, Hamilton later fathered the American corporate state.
Hamilton married a woman who made him rich and gave him eight children. Then he openly confessed to having an affair. His marriage survived.
Washington also expressed fierce affection for the Marquis de Lafayette. PASSIONS opens with the two of them in a passionate embrace, whispering of marriage, headed for the mattress...when they are interrupted by a radical captain named Daniel Shays.
Had such an affair actually been detected, today’s laws would have cost the nation its first Commander in Chief---and probably its War for Independence.
There is no reason to believe there was a smaller proportion of gay men in the Revolutionary Army than there are in today’s military. There is no hard evidence the first Commander in Chief was among them.
But fans of Thomas Jefferson denied for nearly 200 years that he fathered the children of his slave Sally Hemings, only to have DNA prove otherwise.
PASSIONS OF THE POTSMOKING PATRIOTS is a satire, and George Washington’s sexual preferences have never been seriously questioned.
But as we weigh repeal of the ban on gays in the military, Congress should consider the costs---real and potential---of stripping the armed forces of any of its treasured assets.
HARVEY WASSERMAN’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES is at www.harveywasserman.com, along with “Thomas Paine’s” PASSIONS OF THE POTSMOKING PATRIOTS.