Her views are never clearer than in her description of Hamilton's reaction to the death of Laurens. "Hamilton mourned him passionately, and never ceased to regret him . . . Betsey [Schuyler Hamilton] consoled, diverted, and bewitched him, but there were times when he would have exchanged her for Laurens." She adds, with some regret, "The perfect friendship of two men is the deepest and highest sentiment of which the finite mind is capable; women miss the best in life."

Sponsor Message.

In Jonathan Katz's pioneering Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (1976), the relationship between Hamilton and Laurens was for the first time read through the lens of a sophisticated understanding of same-sex love and sexual relationships as historically contingent. He places the letters in the social context of their time without excusing their effusive language as merely a convention or describing them in terms of brotherhood or idealized friendship.

Katz points out that, given the number of classical allusions in the letters, Hamilton and Laurens saw the model for their relationship as Greek, and suggests that these classical allusions may have been "one of the semisecret languages used by American homosexuals to speak of those same-sex relations otherwise unnameable among Christians."

The memory of Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens lives on at the Alexander Hamilton Post 448 of the American Legion in San Francisco, the only branch of the organization comprised primarily of glbtq veterans.

Despite the opposition of some other American Legion members, Post 448 received its charter in 1985. Since then they have regularly marched in both San Francisco's Gay Pride Parades and Veterans' Day Parades. They also sent contingents to the 1993 March on Washington and to the Stonewall 25 Parade in New York in 1994 and served as the color guard at Gay Games II in 1986. The members of Alexander Hamilton Post 448 are dedicated to the welfare of glbtq veterans and current service personnel and strongly advocate the repeal of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

Although sparsely documented and frequently in a condemnatory context, instances of same-sex male attraction or activity during the American colonial period can be found in or inferred from court documents, travel narratives, sermons, and letters.

Marches on Washington in support of the rights of glbtq people have been a significant part of the modern movement for equality.

Both parades and marches have served to render the glbtq community visible; whereas marches typically attempt to effect political change, parades and pride events affirm identity and community.

The "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, in effect since 1993, was a compromise intended to end discrimination against gay men and lesbians in the U. S. military, but it has failed to halt discharges based solely on sexual orientation.