As Kamala Harris aims to become Americas first woman president, the GOP could not be acting as a greater foil. The issue of traditional heterosexual masculinity and its necessity as a component of a strong president has never featured so prominently in an election campaign as it has from team Trump. And when it comes to voters, it can be argued that America has never before faced such a large male/female divide.Republicans view Trumps masculinity as a clear advantage, with many supporters believing that America is a mans country that needs an alpha like Trump to protect it. Related Lessons in resistance: How AIDS activism can teach us to save ourselves from hate Community-centered support is helping queer people take back control. Trumps supporters believe he is strong enough to fight and protect women and that men who take on softer female characteristics like childcare are not man enough to lead. Never Miss a Beat Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights. Subscribe to our Newsletter today Trumpers like former Fox host Tucker Carlson have raised alarm bells about the end of traditional masculinity, and current Fox host Jesse Watters spends his time on air denigrating Democratic men as embarrassingly feminine for doing basic things like drinking out of straws.The right has even mocked Democratic vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz as Tampon Tim because he signed a bill to make free menstrual product available in Minnesotas school bathrooms. The nickname is a clear attempt to associate his support for menstruating people with being soft. Walz is a former football coach, a former National Guardsman, and a hunter, but his willingness to stand firmly behind women makes him weak in the eyes of Trumpers. This embrace of traditional masculinity is, in part, what has fueled the GOPs all-out attacks on queer people and the continued dismantling of their rights.The Democrats, meanwhile, are running completely opposite campaigns. Actor Sam Elliot, for example, told voters to be a man and vote fora woman. Experts and Democratic insiders have argued that the Republican idea that traditional masculinity ever historically existed or that traditional heterosexual values are necessary for a president is simply not the case. Those involved in this cultural debate have been known to cite President James Buchanan as an example. A bachelor in the oval office The scholar Gail Bederman has defined American masculinity not as an unchanging essence inherent to all male bodied humans but instead as a historical and ideological process which has evolved throughout the twentieth century. As such, by the end of the twentieth century, according to historian Kevin Murphy, a red blooded Rosseveltian model of masculinity proved ascendant and functioned as a prescriptive ideal for American men. Parallel with this was the political weaponization of such an image, which also sought to contrast it by creating a powerful correlation of weakness and effeminacy with homosexuality, thus stigmatizing the LGBTQ+ population. This means that to many, the idea of a gay president is an anathema.This is the context in which the debate surrounding the sexuality of President James Buchanan continues, and perhaps it has never been more relevant.James Buchanan is the only American president never to marry. He remained a bachelor his entire life, and his sexuality has long been questioned. Buchanan was the fifteenth president of the United States and was in office from 1857 until 1861. Born in 1791 in Pennsylvania, he was the son of an Irishman, James Buchanan Senior, and his wife Elizabeth Speer. James Buchanan Senior was a merchant investor who rose to prominence in the town of Mercersburg. Buchanans mother was interested in politics, and the future president credited her with supervising his education. Fiercely ambitious, the young Buchanan sought to pursue a career first in law and then in politics, opposing James Madison in the War of 1812. By 1820 he was elected to the House of Representatives. He was made ambassador to Russia in 1832 and was elected to the Senate upon his return. Buchanan had greater ambitions, but his lifestyle and reputation came under constant scrutiny and criticism, specifically the fact that he was not married.Buchanan had been engaged to a woman, Anne Coleman, who he met in 1818, but she suspected him of being unfaithful or of marrying her for her money. So the engagement came to nothing. Never again would he make any serious move towards marriage, but as Aaron Venerable Brown, a political rival of Buchanans from Tennessee, made perfectly clear in a letter, there was nonetheless a better half or wife in Buchanans life. The man Brown sarcastically described as Buchanans better half was William Rufus King. King was himself a politician who had been elected to the House of Representatives in 1810, where the two had met, and by 1834 they were serving together in the Senate.On the surface, they seemed very different, with Buchanan being at the time a Federalist and King a Democrat, but they shared similar views on the most important and divisive issue of the day: slavery. Soon, both were allied with Jackson and his Democrats in favor of slavery, Buchanan having been convinced that the economy of the South depended on slavery, something which King, as a Southerner, also believed. The two eternal bachelors became firm friends. Although King claimed to have lost his heart in Russia, he never had a serious romantic relationship with a woman. The pair were frequently required to be in Washington, and they began to live together in a boarding house, sharing a room at times, something of which Washington society soon took notice.Such a living arrangement was not unusual at the time, but the fact that the two men were so often seen out together and that they continued to room together once other boarders had moved out was. References to Mr Buchanan and his wife or even to Aunt Nancy and Aunt Fancy as they were called, began to abound in the papers and letters of the time. They were also referred to as the Siamese twins, all of which were derogatory terms implying homosexuality.There is no disputing that the two men were extremely close, and Kings letters attest to a high level of emotional intimacy. Sixty letters survive, but unfortunately, they only offer us Kings perspective, as Buchanan is famous for asking that all his letters be destroyed if they were marked either private or personal. Kings letters, however, sent when the two men were apart, are littered with phrases like, I hope you will find no one to replace me in affection, or I am lonely in the midst of Paris[I have]no friend [here] with whom I can commune as with my own thoughts. While only one tiny paragraph survives from Buchanan regarding his relationship with King, it is a revealing one. It was written as part of a letter Buchanan wrote to Cornelia Roosevelt, with whose family King was staying. He writes, I envy Colonel King the pleasure of meeting you & would give any thing in reason to be of the party for a single week. I am now solitary & 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. I feel that it is not good for 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 & not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection. This paragraph is said by some to imply sexual intimacy between Buchanan and King.Whatever the true nature of the two mens relationship, Buchanans lack of a wife was used to attack him politically, Browns thinly veiled criticism was one of many leveled at him.Challenging the status quo King died in 1853, and Buchanan was devastated, writing that King was the best, the purest and most consistent public [man] I have known. 4 years later, Buchanan became president, where his steadfast and unpopular alliance with the southern slave states, as well as the growing strength of the abolition movement, meant that he was unable to prevent his country from hurtling toward civil war. Buchanan died in 1868 and is generally remembered as one of the weakest presidents in history.The two mens relationship caused rumors and speculation during their lifetime, something which has continued ever since. By the 1980s, the idea that America once had a gay president had taken root.Some today regard the possibility as a good thing, a face for the numerous repressed LGBTQ+ people in history, inciting people to ask difficult questions and challenge the historical status quo. Others think it is nothing more than an attempt to inflict modern values upon historical figures.What is clear is that masculinity has never been what Trump and the Republicans claim it has been: It is far more complex than that. Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.