All these assertions, however, pale in the face of Kramer's most outrageous theory: that Lincoln's murder may have been a kind of gay-bashing, resulting from a kinky sexual set-up. "There's some evidence that shows that Speed presented Booth to Lincoln as a 'present' and the young Booth, who was a gorgeous man, was virulently homophobic, like the men who killed Matthew Shepard," he says. "If the murder turns out to have had a homosexual underpinning, that's going to freak everybody out."

Seemingly outlandish claims like these -- along with the fact that Kramer is not by any conventional definition a scholar -- obviously raise questions about his historical judgment and probity. Isn't Kramer just a propagandist, laboring mightily to turn the 1800s into 18th and Castro?

Interestingly, however, Lincoln scholars have largely held their fire even when confronted with Kramer's more extreme claims. "That's pretty wild," says Douglas Wilson of the Lincoln-Booth theory. "If Lincoln and Booth had ever met, I would have thought we would have known more about it. But all ideas are welcome; you learn more when people argue."

Arguments coming from Larry Kramer tend to have a special vehemence. Long a lightning rod for controversy both within and without the gay community, Kramer knows how to play his cards for all they're worth -- although playing them close to his chest is not his strong suit. After founding ACT-UP and the Gay Men's Health Crisis, two staggeringly influential organizations within the gay community, Kramer assailed the Reagan administration, the medical establishment and heterosexuals in general (whom he referred to as "they") with razor pen and acid tongue. Just as often, he attacked his own community; his conflicts with factions of the two organizations he founded erupted into public spectacles of ire and recrimination. No setting was too sacrosanct for Kramer to tell his angry truths -- as evidenced by a eulogy he once gave in which he accused the gathering of mourners (including himself) of murdering the deceased with their complacency and passivity.

Compared to those days of high dudgeon and real crisis, it seems odd that Kramer is so anxious about his scholarly crusade to out a dead president. Why won't he share his evidence? His explanations vary from wanting to protect the poor folks of Davenport from a mob of Lincoln lunatics to simply wanting to finish his monster-in-the-box book (now 2,000 pages long and at least five years away from being finished) in peace. He's also planning to submit a short excerpt of the Lincoln material to magazines this fall. But when pressed, he confesses that he fears the vitriol, or worse, that may rain down upon him from outraged defenders of Lincoln's sullied honor. "Don't tell them where I live," he adds at the end of one phone conversation, with no hint of irony.

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