A person's sexual orientation matters when it comes to art, poetry, or even at all. A beautiful painting is just that, a beautiful painting, whether or not painted by a heterosexual or a homosexual. It is assumed that Walt Whitman was homosexual based on the tone of his poems. Frances Willard, a pioneer for women and education, was also thought to be homosexual based on her long-term cohabiting relationships with women. Facts can be demonstrated and textbooks should teach the facts and let interpretation and opinions be discussed in class. Teaching openness, interpretation, and opinion formation is an important lesson for everyone to learn, but textbooks should only publish facts. Walt Whitman wrote poems with a tone of homosexuality, therefore presumed homosexual. Whitman was born in 1819 in New York. He has worked throughout his life in many different trades picking up experiences along the way including; teacher, journalist, clerk and assistant as a nurse during the Civil War. Whitman loved writing poetry and used his own money to publish an untitled book of twelve poems in 1855, later titled "Leaves of Grass." Throughout the rest of his life he continued to expand this book by adding poems and revising them. The book “Leaves of Grass” was about nature, love, friendship and democracy. Whitman's works of poetry, for the time, were called obscene, due to the overt sexual tone of his poems. (Foundation 2014)The topic of Whitman's sexual orientation has been a topic of discussion among biographers for years. The problem with stating as fact that Walt Whitman was homosexual is that there is no real evidence. Adding opinion as fact to Whitman's poetry can have a terrible effect on his work. Whitman... center of paper... discussion. Discussions should be careful not to narrowly define or reduce the work of Whitman or Willard to a small area of ​​their lives. It is important to print in textbooks and teach facts and not opinions. Once opinions begin to be printed in textbooks, history begins to change. History must be remembered as it happened, not as we wanted it to happen or as we thought it should have happened. In remembering history, hopefully, we can learn from our mistakes. It's not nice to read about some things that happened in the story; people can be terrible to each other. It should be shocking that the Holocaust happened and the brutality of it all. If it's not shocking, then we are bound to repeat it. We as people, I hope, can evolve and improve over time. We value life today more than we have throughout history, or at least that's what I hope we do.