Warning: Contains spoilers for Bros.While it might be a romantic comedy at heart, Bros is also packed with references to true LGBTQ+ history, much of which has been forgotten or deliberately erased. Bros claims its own place in LGBTQ+ history by being the first gay rom-com to come from a major studio. In keeping with that fact, Bros prioritized having a predominately LGBTQ+ cast and crew, offering opportunities to people who have often not been able to take part in larger productions.
Bros centers its story on the romance between Bobby (Billy Eichner) and Aaron (Luke Macfarlane). However, it is also framed around Bobby and his board attempting to open an LGBTQ+ history museum. This framing provides the perfect way for Bros to introduce discussions of queer history and experiences without it feeling overly forced.
While some of the LGBTQ+ history included in Bros is fairly self-explanatory or is generally well-known, other parts might leave some viewers feeling a little in the dark. This is especially true because of the other aspect that is raised in these discussions: the continued erasure and loss of LGBTQ+ history in society. Most of Bobby’s comments, including those about LGBTQ+ figures from thousands of years ago being ignored, forgotten, or deliberately erased, are entirely accurate. Here are the key parts of LGBTQ+ history Bros discusses and what the true stories are behind them.
Wait - Who Threw The First Brick At Stonewall?
Throughout the 1960s, it was common for police to raid LGBTQ+ bars and queer neighborhoods were subject to police brutality as police enforced laws that made consensual LGBTQ+ sex or even dancing with a partner of the same gender illegal. While there was pushback against these, the raid on the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village on June 28, 1969, served to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. The Stonewall riots which came as a result are credited with being behind a larger change in the gay liberation movement and are the event that is commemorated by Pride parades every June.
In many circles, it is considered common knowledge that the first brick of the Stonewall riots was thrown by a trans woman of color: Marsha P. Johnson. Bobby suggests that it isn’t known who threw the first brick, but teases gay cis men for coming to the party late by suggesting that one of them likely threw the 11th brick at Stonewall. The comment about the first brick is actually true as while Marsha P. Johnson is often cited as the person who threw the first brick, she herself refuted this, saying in interviews in 1979 and 2001 that she didn’t arrive until 2am, that the riots had already started and noted “I have been given the credit for throwing the first Molotov cocktail by many historians but I always like to correct it. I threw the second one, I did not throw the first one!” (via Pink News). In reality, it is not known who threw the first brick, just as Bobby says, and it is ultimately just important that the event happened.
Why Provincetown Is So Important In Bros & Its Real History
In Bros, Bobby has to travel to Provincetown to try and convince a donor to the museum’s LGBTQ+ exhibit and has to appear on a float in the Pride parade. Aaron unexpectedly s him and they have some key intimate moments while on their trip. However, Provincetown itself is important to LGBTQ+ history and isn’t just a seaside destination that Bros used for the aesthetic.
Provincetown is a major LGBTQ+ summer tourism spot with the Provincetown Business Guild being formed in the 70s to help promote gay tourism. Before that, the town already had a large LGBTQ+ population and back to the early 1900s the area was noted for queer-driven art, theater, and drag performances. Provincetown is home to the Atlantic House, which stakes a claim for the oldest gay bar in the United States, and it holds a 2017 memorial dedicated to people who have died from AIDS.
What Bobby's Continued References To The Dead Are About
Throughout Bros, there are references to the dead and those who are no longer around to tell their stories. Two of the most notable of these come from the owner of the place Bobby and Aaron stay in Provincetown who shows a picture of seven men and states that four were dead soon after, and in Bobby’s speech at the museum he takes a moment to recognize those who are no longer around to be able to attend the event. While Bobby rarely states directly what he is talking about, these references are to the huge number of LGBTQ+ people, particularly gay men, who died from the AIDS epidemic.
While there are other forgotten LGBTQ+ history that Bobby references in Bros.
Was Lincoln Really Gay (Or Bi)?
When trying to find the perfect topic for his LGBTQ+ museum’s final exhibit in Bros, Bobby lands on the idea of an exhibit on Lincoln being gay or, as Robert (Jim Rash) points out, more likely bisexual. While the exhibit begins to be assembled, it is ultimately pulled after people threaten to boycott the museum and the characters note that it is a highly debated topic and stating Lincoln’s sexuality is difficult to do with any certainty. While Abraham Lincoln’s sexuality cannot be stated definitively (that would be for him to do, and that poses some logistical problems at this point), there is definitely enough evidence that it is a debatable subject and has been discussed at least as far back as the early 1900s.
As Bros points out, Lincoln had a close friendship and business partner with Joshua Fry Speed and they became roommates and shared a bed for four years. While the sharing of beds between people of the same sex was not uncommon at the time and did not necessarily indicate any closer relationship, it was rare for such an arrangement to continue for so long. While there are documents that have surfaced that claim to confirm the two were lovers, their veracity has never been demonstrated.
Some suggest that it is not possible that Lincoln and Speed had a relationship as Lincoln’s marriage to Mary Todd Lincoln and the four children that came from the marriage demonstrate that he had heterosexual interests. Aside from ignoring bisexual and pansexual orientations, this repudiation overlooks the delays in the two eventually being married. The Lincolns were set to be married on January 1, 1841, but Abraham Lincoln broke off the engagement on his wedding day and later that year visited Joshua Speed for a month as a way to recuperate his mental health. It was not until November 4, 1842, nearly two years after the original ceremony was planned that the Lincolns were finally married.
One biographer, Wayne C. Temple, has suggested that he married Mary Todd after she became pregnant, noting that when he asked James Harvey Matheny to be his best man, he said “I shall have to marry that girl” and when his landlord’s son saw Lincoln dressing for his wedding and asked where the man was going, Lincoln responded “to hell, I suppose.” (via Los Angeles Times). So while Lincoln’s sexuality will likely remain a mystery, it’s clear that he had a close relationship with Joshua Fry Speed and was perhaps not entirely excited to marry Mary Todd Lincoln, suggesting that there is plenty of scope for debate.
LGBTQ+ Museum Cameos Explained
In the Bros finale, visitors to the LGBTQ+ history museum are greeted by holographic straight actors playing key LGBTQ+ historical figures. These cameos are all introduced by another cameo as Ben Stiller plays his Night at the Museum character, Larry Daley, in a skit that pays off an earlier joke between Bobby and Aaron. While some of these figures might be familiar to all audiences, the names are rushed through and the explanation of the figures’ import is omitted.
Amy Schumer plays Eleanor Roosevelt, first lady to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. While less contentious than Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt’s place in the LGBTQ+ community is another subject of scholarly discussion. During her life, Eleanor Roosevelt exchanged intimate letters with a reporter for the Associated Press, Lorena “Hick” Hickok who was a lesbian. The letters they shared suggest some physicality to their relationship, but the full details are lost to time. Eleanor Roosevelt also maintained friendships with a great many lesbian couples, but overall historians remain divided on the matter, with most tending to assume that historical figures are cisgender and heterosexual unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Harvey Milk (Seth Meyers) and James Baldwin (Kenan Thompson) are less contentious entries in the the LGBTQ+ community is not without its controversies, he was instrumental in larger political change and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 by President Obama. Even Harvey Milk, whose story is perhaps most well known of these, is often not taught in schools, and all of these cameos represent part of the forgotten and erased LGBTQ+ history that Bros discusses.
