Much ado has been made lately about The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, a soon-to-be-released book written by psychologist and sex researcher C.A. Tripp shortly before his death. Taking into account Lincoln’s dearth of close friends and his icy marriage to Mary Todd, Intimate World arrives at the conclusion that one of Lincoln’s favorite pastimes was smoking a little stovepipe (if you know what I mean). It’ s certainly not a new rumor; in 1978, Lincoln was tenuously referenced in the name of the Log Cabin Republicans, who sought to provide a voice for gay Republicans by distancing themselves from the label as much as possible.

I first heard about Tripp’s book — and the resulting controversy — while watching two talking heads duke it out on CNBC. Many weighty issues were raised, such as:

* Abraham Lincoln had sex with men.
* Abraham Lincoln did not have sex with men.
* No, seriously, he totally took it up the butt.

After enduring ten minutes of this verbal ping-pong match, I had only one question: who cares? Isn’t there a war going on somewhere, or at least people engaging in fights to the death over DVD players at Wal-Mart?

Sadly, plenty care, and Uncle Abe isn’t the only one whose bed habits are being debated seven score and four years after the fact. Americans have a long and storied tradition of posthumously outing historical figures, foisting the honor upon such influential people as Plato, Shakespeare, Alexander the Great, Virgil and three of the four Ninja Turtles’ namesakes (apparently Raphael was the only one tempted by April’s pneumatic figure).

This despite the fact that the dichotomous concept of homosexuality and heterosexuality didn’t even exist until the late 19th century, and that pederasty was the Ancient Greek equivalent of miniature golf. Applying a modern construct to an entirely different culture ex post facto is meaningless to begin with, but to treat the results as a profound statement on societal mores is simply a waste of time.

Speculation isn’t limited to the deceased, of course. Even greater amounts of time are squandered in thorough examination of the current celebrity roster — sometimes to farcical effect. In 2001, Tom Cruise filed not one but two $100 million lawsuits: one against an “erotic wrestler” who claimed that he’d had a fling with the toothy actor, and another against a man who advertised “home videos” that he and Cruise had allegedly made together.

Even our athletes, the country’s finest specimens of androgen-drenched masculinity, aren’t safe from the prying eyes of a curious public. Mets catcher Mike Piazza, responding to rumors that he batted for the other team (if you know what I mean), held an emergency press conference to dispel any uncertainty about his heterosexual tendencies.

But nothing beats the absurdity of outing a fictional character, especially one that isn’t even human. This, too, has been done in spades, perhaps the most salient example being Rev. Jerry Falwell’s 1999 attack on Tinky Winky, the purple Teletubby with a triangle-shaped antenna who carries a little red purse with him wherever he goes. Given that the Teletubbies have abdominal television sets in lieu of genitalia and live under the constant, benevolent gaze of a glowing baby head, it seems unlikely that they would spend any significant amount of time engaged in copulation — although the purse-equals-gay argument is a persuasive one.

More recently, people have questioned the sexual orientation of one of the most influential personalities of the previous decade: SpongeBob SquarePants. According to a Jan. 21 article on Reuters, “SpongeBob, who lives in a pineapple under the sea, was ‘outed’ by the U.S. media in 2002 after reports that the TV show and its merchandise are popular with gays.” Even Reuters doesn’t take this stuff seriously; isn’t that the most convincing sign possible that we’ve crossed the line from an informed society to one obsessed with triviality?

Yet we continue obsessing, for two basic purposes. One is defamation; people (and animated sponges) are accused of being gay in order to malign them in the public eye. To discuss this approach, which presupposes that homosexuality is evil, would take far more than the 850 words I have, so forgive me if I gloss over it at the moment.

Then there is the normalization motive, wherein people point to gay celebrities in order to prove that — in the least paranoid sense of the phrase — gay people are all around us. The ultimate goal is to show that homosexuality is not a hindrance or a shameful secret but a quality present in all types of people during all historical periods. This was likely the impetus for Tripp, and all others who enthusiastically and retroactively out historical figures. The motivation is not ignoble at its heart, but it’ s counterproductive.

Reassuring as it may be that sexual orientation has been reduced from a taboo topic to Us Weekly fodder, it doesn’t detach the sense of shame from a non-normative orientation to out people who categorically deny the label, as Cruise and Piazza did. The media’s obsession with uncloseting celebrities reeks of the famous Seinfeldian refrain: “Not that there’ s anything wrong with that!” The implication is, of course, the opposite: “There is something wrong with that, but I won’t be the one to say it.”

To cover up facts would be contrary to the spirit of journalistic integrity — however, so is sensationalizing things that ought to be, for all intents and purposes, relegated to trivia status. Perhaps Lincoln’ s famous whiskers weren’t his only beard, Plato gave Aristotle a lot more than his tutelage and SpongeBob enjoys engaging in SpongeAnalSex with other SpongeMales (if you know what I mean); is there any reason we should care? Only when considering the lucrative possibility of gay historical-fiction pornography