The Unacknowledged Queer Couple of Hamilton + Video

By: Percy Okoben

Hello, guys, gals, and nonbinary pals! My name is Percy Okoben, I use he/him and they/them pronouns and today we are talking about something near and dear to my heart: Hamilton. Now you may be wondering, Percy, what does this have to do with your norman topic of LGBT issues, identities, and experiences? Well, bear with me. Let’s start at the beginning. The musical Hamilton was created in 2014 by Lin-Manuel Miranda and debuted on Broadway in 2015, meriting a large and obsessive fanbase. I was initially annoyed when all of my friends began asking me who my favorite character was, sarcastically answering “Peggy,” but when I eventually jumped on the bandwagon, I got pretty obsessed. So much so that when I heard the school choir singing “Helpless” in ninth grade, I loudly squealed and sufficiently disturbed those around me. But even then I didn’t know about the topic of this video. Flash forward to 2020, and Disney+ has released a performance of Hamilton recorded in 2016 and the fandom is reborn. People are discovering new things that they didn’t know before, had they not previously seen the musical performed, such as *spoiler alert* the song John Laurens’s character sang after his death, dubbed the “secret song” by Lin-Manuel Miranda. But I learned the following.

One night, plagued by a bout of insomnia, I was scrolling through YouTube at one in the morning (don’t judge me, we all do it) and discovered a video. The video in question was “Are They Gay - Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens,” by the YouTuber Are They Gay, whose videos about Destiel and McLennon I had previously watched (again, don’t judge me). At this, I laughed. “Why, of all people, Alexander and Laurens?” Nevertheless, curious, I clicked on the video. And boy am I glad I did. 

The following historical information is taken from both the aforementioned video and Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton, which I am now reading. Well, listening to the audiobook while I knit and ponder the meaninglessness of my existence (for a third time, don’t judge me). John Laurens and Alexander Hamilton met while fighting in the revolutionary war and proceeded to write letters to one another for the rest of Laurens’s life. They talked about everything, from books to congress, even confessions of love. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Friendship was different back then. Men told each other they loved each other all the time. They slept in the same beds, held hands, did all sorts of things. Okay. This is valid. But answer me this; when one of two friends got engaged *cough* Alexander, you scoundrel *cough* were they so embarrassed that they didn’t tell the other for weeks afterward, and even then, express not love for the fiance in question, but a sort of indifference? I thought not.
Once I found out about this, I was exhilarated. I looked for signs in the dialogue of Hamilton that Lin-Manuel Miranda had acknowledged the relationship as he had with Eliza Schuyler, Maria Reynolds, even the questioned relationship that Hamilton had with Angelica Schuyler Church, his wife’s own sister. But you know what I found? A big old goose egg. Nothing. It was only in the choreography that it was even hinted at. And when a boy, in possession of a large question, who must be in want of some answers, finds this out, what is he to feel? Anger, for one thing. Sadness, for another. Bewilderment for a third, that just because a relationship was queer, that is wasn’t treated with the same value that other straight relationships of a questionable validity were. This is a pattern we see over and over again. LGBT people are queercoded or straight-washed, so as to protect the media they are appearing in from public scorn. But who is to stand up for a relationship written down by Ron Chernow as an “adolescent crush,” when, had it been and man and a woman, it would certainly be called something more? Why are we downgraded to niche films for people who like that sort of thing? Or killed off or faced with unfortunate circumstances as some sort of twisted cautionary tale? I don’t know the answers to these questions. I don’t know why Lin-Manuel Miranda tweets about a relationship but puts nothing in the dialogue of his show to acknowledge it so the fans who have the, at one point, rare chance to see it must pull apart its choreography to get one inch of representation. All I can do is encourage anyone who is writing about a queer couple in history not to keep us from the room where it happens. Ah, do you see what I did? I tied it back to Hamilton in the end, there. Okay, goodbye, do something else with your life that isn’t listening to me talk.