"We’ll have a rotating first lady."

Said Lindsey Graham, who's running for President in the strange condition of being unmarried. I'm saying strange, because we haven't had an unmarried President since Woodrow Wilson's wife died, while he was President, and he got a new wife a year later. So Wilson was the opposite of a celibate kind of man. For that, we must go back to James Buchanan and Grover Cleveland.

Buchanan, President from 1857 to 1861, is the only President to remain unmarried his whole life, though he did have a close relationship with another man, William Rufus King:

The two men lived together in a Washington boardinghouse for 10 years from 1834 until King's departure for France in 1844. King referred to the relationship as a "communion", and the two attended social functions together.... Andrew Jackson called them "Miss Nancy" and "Aunt Fancy" (the former being a 19th-century euphemism for an effeminate man), while Aaron V. Brown referred to King as Buchanan's "better half"....

In May 1844, Buchanan wrote to Cornelia Roosevelt, "I am now 'solitary and 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 [I] 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, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection."

Cleveland is more recent. President from 1885 to 1889 and 1893 to 1897, he was unmarried when first elected, but, after using his sister in the First Lady role for the first 2 years, he got married to a woman who was only 21. He was 49 and President of the United States. How's that for a power imbalance in marriage? The woman, Frances Folsom, was the daughter of his friend Oscar Folsom:

This marriage was unusual, since Cleveland was the executor of Oscar Folsom's estate and had supervised Frances' upbringing after her father's death; nevertheless, the public took no exception to the match.

Just imagine how the media would react today.



They had 5 children, including "Baby" Ruth...



... who was not the source of the name for the Baby Ruth candy bar, though the Curtiss Candy Company claimed she was when they renamed their Kandy Kake bar in 1921, right when baseball's Babe Ruth was huge. An epic denial.

But let's return to the denial that is celibacy. Is it denial to eschew marriage? Have you ever read the notes Charles Darwin wrote to himself as he pondered the pros and cons of marriage. From the "pro" column:

Constant companion,(& friend in old age) who will feel interested in one,— object to be beloved & played with.— —better than a dog anyhow.— Home, & someone to take care of house— Charms of music & female chit-chat.— These  things good for one’s health.— but terrible loss of time. —

Better than a dog anyhow.... Lindsey could just get a rotating dog....