Back in the day, I remember reading a random article about Presidents and their sexual practices and affairs. It talked about which ones were single, married, had known mistresses, if they paid child support, and if they had illegitimate children. I am pretty sure I read about all of this during the whole Clinton affair ordeal.
I also remember reading something about one or two U.S. Presidents who may have been gay or Bi.
The first major big deal about a President and their sex life that immediately comes to my mind is JFK, but nothing really before that.
Sorry for the long list of questions but a recent debate I had got me thinking about all of this. I also don't expect all the questions answered, just any information provided would be awesome. Thanks!!
A President's sex life has been important, to the extent of people wanting to elect men with families and one marriage: there's only been one divorced president, Ronald Reagan. And only one unmarried president, James Buchanan, who was possibly gay. Buchanan would have had to be very closeted, of course, like any gay politician of the time, so it's still a matter of speculation precisely what he was. Reagan got divorced quite early in his life, had been married to Nancy long enough for people to forget Jane Wyman (who kept herself out of politics and his later career) and it was never really an issue. Perhaps because he seemed to be the charismatic saviour of the whole movement, those conservatives who might dislike a divorce in a liberal president were content to accept it in one of theirs: and liberals of course did not see it as being important.
In the days before effective and commonly-available birth control, sex often resulted in pregnancy and illegitimate children. But there's only been one president with an illegitimate child, Grover Cleveland. Otherwise very remarkable for his honesty and disdain for party machines and party bosses in a time when corruption was really the norm in US politics, Cleveland probably was the father of a son by Maria Halpin when he was a batchelor of 40. It's possible he was not, and was actually covering for one or another of his married friends who had "shared her affections" and had much more to lose, but Halpin claimed there was no other possible father. The affair was used by Republicans in the 1884 election, but unsuccessfully. On one hand, Cleveland had acknowledged paternity, and behaved honorably, settling money on the child ( who was adopted by a family) . On the other hand, his opponent, James Blaine, was seen as the epitome of a corrupt machine politician, and Cleveland won. Very soon after, he married an attractive woman 27 years younger ( again , acting honorably, he'd first gotten her mother's permission to write to her) and when she began producing children ( five) the Halpin affair was soon forgotten.
Angela Seratorre: President Cleveland's Problem
EDIT :I see that a recent DNA test has verified at long last that Warren Harding did have a child by Nan Britton which has long been disputed, so Cleveland is not the sole president with an illegitimate child. In Harding's case, he'd died by the time the claim was made, in 1927. None of his other affairs came to light before then, including the one with Carrie Fulton Phillps who ( I am not sure if this is settled) possibly blackmailed the Republican party into paying her to keep quiet when Harding ran for president.
For another example of using sex as an issue in a campaign and failing, the rancorous 1828 election of Andrew Jackson saw the followers of John Quincy Adams trying to use his technically briefly- bigamous marriage to Rachel Donelson against him . Jackson was a war hero, and it failed to sway the voters, but he felt it hurt Rachel, who died that year. His fury over it was doubtless later carried into the Peggy Eaton Affair.