Transcript from 570 KLIF AM (Dallas, TX) radio program 2005:
“The Backside of American History”
Presented by Ed Wallace
We should for a moment back up and discuss gay marriage versus civil unions, because that battle was fought all the way back in 1857, when James Buchanan was elected President. Why? Because…Buchanan appears to have been America’s first gay president.
Buchanan never married. But he lived for years with Alabama senator Rufus King and the two were inseparable. In fact, Andrew Jackson had always referred to Senator King as Miss Nancy, which was the common slang for a gay man at the time. Tennessee Representative Aaron Brown wrote to James K. Polk about King and Buchanan, calling King ‘Aunt Fancy’ and Buchanan’s better half and his wife. However, the two men were torn apart in 1844 when President Tyler appointed King our minister to France. Buchanan, devastated and lonely, wrote to a friend: “I am now solitary and alone, having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any of them. I feel that it is not good for a man to be alone and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid, who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well and not expect from me any ardent or romantic affection.”
