Shifting Paradigms...

would be a great name for a rock band.

It's also blogger (and out of the closet gay man) Tom Chatt's theory for why the scientific community is having such a hard time with the Lincoln-is-gay question I raised on this very blog a few days ago.

Over at UpWord, he argues that scientists won't readily accept any new idea that destroys their old way of thinking. They will wait until sufficient other theories arise that make their old way of thinking entirely obsolete before they "shift paradigms" and accept the new concept. He uses Copernicus' conception of a heliocentric universe as an example. (Remember heliocentric? It means the Sun in the middle, for all you Bush voters).

So, all this sounds reasonable enough to me. Until he starts making it into a gay-straight thing...

And so it is with Lincoln being gay (or Michelangelo or Shakespeare or whoever). I was struck reading Andrew Sullivan's defense about the arguments he made, often ending with "sound familiar?" or "ring a bell?". Yes. To me. And to Andrew, and to others who share (or at least truly understand) the coming out experience. But not necessarily to others who don't share that life experience or sensibility.

I'm a straight guy, and I had absolutely no problem accepting the idea that Lincoln might be gay. There are literally thousands of gay men who have influenced the sum of human history. Just as it's not shocking to me that Alexander the Great or Michaelangelo may have taken trips on the brown side, it's not shocking that Honest Abe may have done the same. It still doesn't explain that bizarre top hat, but there you go...He wanted to make a good Halloween costume some day, I guess.