Katharine Lee Bates, writer of "America the Beautiful" most likely had a same sex partner

[G_j]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Lee_Bates

Bates was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, the daughter of Congregational pastor William Bates and his wife, Cornelia Frances Lee. She graduated from Wellesley High School in 1874 and from Wellesley College with a B.A. in 1880. She taught at Natick High School during 1880–81 and at Dana High School from 1885 until 1889. She returned to Wellesley as an instructor, then an associate professor 1891–93 when she was awarded an M.A. and became full professor of English literature. She studied at Oxford University during 1890–91.[1] While teaching at Wellesley, she was elected a member of the newly formed Pi Gamma Mu honor society for the social sciences because of her interest in history and politics.

Bates lived in Wellesley with Katharine Coman, who was a history and political economy teacher and founder of the Wellesley College school Economics department. The pair lived together for twenty-five years until Coman's death in 1915. In 1922, Bates published Yellow Clover: A Book of Remembrance, a collection of poems written "to or about my Friend" Katharine Coman, some of which had been published in Coman's lifetime.[6]

Some describe the couple as intimate lesbian partners,[7] citing as an example Bates' 1891 letter to Coman: "It was never very possible to leave Wellesley [for good], because so many love-anchors held me there, and it seemed least of all possible when I had just found the long-desired way to your dearest heart...Of course I want to come to you, very much as I want to come to Heaven."[8] Many contest the use of the term lesbian to describe such a platonic "Boston marriage", typical of many professional women of their time. Writes one: "We cannot say with certainty what sexual connotations these relationships conveyed. We do know that these relationships were deeply intellectual; they fostered verbal and physical expressions of love."[9]

A lifelong, active Republican, Bates broke with the party to endorse Democratic presidential candidate John W. Davis in 1924 because of Republican opposition to American participation in the League of Nations.[3]

[TlalocW]

1. Noooo! First the Pledge is written by a socialist!

Now America the Beautiful by a lesbian?

What's next? Francis Scott Key was an environmentalist? Baseball created by a feminist? Where will it end?



TlalocW

[G_j]

2. I hear ya

the truth can be inconvenient.