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Is Benjamin Franklin gay

Updated: 8/22/2023
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12y ago

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It seems unlikely that Benjamin Franklin was homosexual, but you cant always judge a book by its cover so its would it be easy to just say he was and get on with your life but given his voluminous and often bawdy and suggestive correspondence with a score of women during his long life, as well as his early fathering of an illegitimate child (William Franklin). While it does appear that Franklin's decades-long marriage to Deborah Read may have been more a devoted friendship and practical partnership than a union of much passion, this fact alone provides little by which to draw or support broader conclusions about Franklin's sexuality, while much evidence argues for his heterosexual inclinations.

On the other hand, Franklin was something of a mystery even to his contemporaries. This of course seems to have been, at least in part, by design. He explicitly advocated keeping, to a certain extent, one's own counsel . As stated in Poor Richard's Almanac: "Proclaim not all thou knowest, all thou owest, all thou hast, nor all thou canst."

Certainly, however, it pays the great man no disrespect to speculate about his emotional life, and given his penchant for mirth and universality, not to mention enlightenment values and a scientist's devotion to objectivity and fearless investigation, he would probably be amused, not insulted. As evidence in support of this conclusion, note Franklin's radical (for the time) beliefs on what we might now call "equality." The only founding father to openly call for an end to slavery, Franklin's last published essay was a scathing satire attacking not just slavery but the bigotry that grew from it. Franklin had come to this position late in life, and was therefore all the more remarkable for it. A man of 80+ he was nonetheless years ahead of his time and peers. In letters he characterized his former acceptance of slavery and of the idea of innate racial inferiorities as a personal prejudice, and one he could no longer rationally support, would not defend, no longer held and must not accept in his country.

His eyes were opened, he reported, during a visit to a school for black children who, he saw, were every inch the equal of white children, intellectually and emotionally. This is relevant as it describes Franklin's ability to seek, weigh and accept rational evidence, a habit that when practiced in a contemporary context argues for the rights of homosexuals today just as it did for african-americans in Franklin's time. Anyone with Franklin's values would have been in support of so-called "gay rights" not beginning in the 1970's or 1980's, but in 1950's when the issue first began to have voice.

Disclaimer: These comments are based on the work of numerous comprehensive biographies of Franklin, as well as many more topic-focussed histories of the founding fathers, among other sources. But certainly I could be in error, so if some evidence illuminating heretofore unknown, or at least not widely apprehended, aspects of Franklin's life are available, PLEASE write up the source or sources so we can all read up!

As an addition to the great work above:

In October of 1785 Franlin was elected as president of Pennsylvania, and in December of that year Joseph Ross of Westmoreland County was tried and sentenced to death for "Buggery." Franlin did not issue a pardon for the crime, although it is noted that he was asked to do so. The term "Buggery" later became "Sodomy" and today could be termed as "Gay" or "Homosexual." While this does not prove anything about Mr. Franklin himself; it does show that he was not sympathetic to this form of conduct.

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10y ago
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13y ago

Ben Franklin probably was cool with it, he's known to have smoked some Cannabis in his time so I imagine he saw it like you see a food you dislike: It might not taste great to you but that doesn't mean someone else loves it in and around them.

"It" being cocks.

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13y ago

No. He was known to like the ladies and loved to party. In France he had the status of a rock star.

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12y ago

Yes. With his dad.

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