Cynematik • Cyndi Greening

I am not certain how I missed this in my upbringing in Wisconsin but somehow I failed to learn that the U.S. has already had a gay president. A friend in Colorado sent information on another script we’re working on and said something flip about a friend being related to the live-in partner of America’s First Gay President. What?!? I was referred to dozens of sites and was shocked to discover that JAMES BUCHANAN, the president prior to Abraham Lincoln was likely our first gay president.

Later, Senator King (the man who lived with Buchanan for decades including while he was in the White House) was elected to the Vice Presidency with Franklin Pierce. That would make King the first gay Vice President.

According to , an art project on the U.S. Presidents by Alex Forman, “Buchanan was a gentle, diplomatic person, religiously fatalistic in his approach to life. He stood six feet tall and was a heavy man. Buchanan “sometimes acts like an old maid,” said James Polk. Buchanan enjoyed a 20-year intimate friendship with Senator William Rufus de Vane King. They shared quarters in Washington, DC for sixteen years. When King died in 1853, Buchanan wrote, “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 one of them.” He referred to King as “Aunt Nancy.” Buchanan was the only bachelor President. In 1866, Buchanan published the first Presidential memoir.”