George Washington and Abe Lincoln: Founding Gay Bashers?

Via Andrew Sullivan, a little bit of patriotic gay-bashing:

Yuma Mayor Al Krieger said he spoke from the heart in a Memorial Day speech at Desert Lawn Cemetery. Krieger said, "And I cannot believe that a bunch of limp-wristed, lacey-drawed people could do what those men have done in the past."

Over a week after those comments, Krieger said there's nothing he would change. "I'm reluctant to compare myself to George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, but I did get some feedback, and I don't think I said anything different than what they would have said."

Well sure, who can forget the stirring climax to Lincoln's Second Inaugural?

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. Except for the queers.

Or the finale of Washington's Farewell Address?

Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. But at least I'm not a pansy. Wait. Did that sound gay?

Brings a tear to your eye.