In the new documentary “Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln,” director Shaun Peterson tackles decades’ worth of speculation about the sexual orientation of the towering 16th U.S. president. 

At the center of the documentary, which will be released in theaters Friday, are Lincoln’s relationships with four men who at one point shared his bed. But just as important as those intimate connections is the film’s exploration of flourishing homosocial relationships in the 19th century — and the idea that only recently has love between men become so problematic.

“We are in a very, very conservative time — this blip on the map of human history where we have names and binaries and now laws that could potentially make loving someone illegal,” Peterson told NBC News, describing the desire to label, categorize and even demonize sexuality as being “very weird” in a larger historical context.

“We’re not trying to make the case that Lincoln was an outlier. We’re not even making the case that Lincoln was gay,” he said, alluding to the film’s focus on emotional intimacy over sex. “We’re making the case that Lincoln participated in behavior that was extraordinarily common at the time.”

Peterson, who has closely followed the evolution of Lincoln scholarship over the past 15 years, first became interested in the controversy around the president’s sexuality when he read Gore Vidal’s 2005 Vanity Fair essay titled “Was Lincoln Bisexual?” Then, the documentarian said, his interest in exploring Lincoln’s relationships with the men — Billy Greene, Elmer Ellsworth, David Derickson and, most importantly, Joshua Speed — grew during the pandemic, when he was repeatedly met with skepticism while discussing the potential project. As a result, he wanted to make a film that could bring attention to the small but growing body of work on Lincoln’s alleged queerness and spark a national conversation.