Roy Cohn

Roy Marcus Cohn (February 20, 1927 – August 2, 1986) was an American lawyer who came to prominence during the investigations by Senator Joseph McCarthy into Communism in the government and especially during the Army-McCarthy Hearings. While widely unpopular during his lifetime, he nonetheless wielded tremendous political power at times. Cohn, a member of the Democratic Party, was known to be relentlessly homophobic, and fought against human and civil rights for most of his career. This continued even after he was outed as a homosexual. He died of AIDS in 1986.

Private life and death

Rumors of Cohn's sexuality began to spread throughout Washington shortly after he was appointed chief counsel to the Government Committee on Operations and hired Schine as his assistant. Cohn's homosexuality was an open secret during most of his career. His public response to all questions on this subject was sometimes evasive and sometimes a flat denial; he encouraged rumors of a relationship with his long-time friend Barbara Walters, who publicly stated that she thought he was heterosexual.

Related Topics:
Sexuality - Washington - Homosexuality - Barbara Walters - Heterosexual

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Though his closeted sexuality was far from unusual at the time, it was in extreme contradiction with his public life in right-wing politics. Cohn and McCarthy (whose own sexuality was the subject of rumors) targeted many government officials and cultural figures not only for Communist sympathies but for homosexual tendencies, sometimes using sexual secrets as a blackmail tool to gain informants. McCarthy may not have known Cohn was gay, but it was widely believed that his aide Schine was Cohn's lover—a rumor alluded to in the Army-McCarthy hearings by Army attorney Joseph Welch: when Cohn produced a photo of Schine as evidence, Welch joked that the photo came from "a pixie ... a close relative of a fairy."

Related Topics:
Closeted - Blackmail - Joseph Welch - Pixie - Fairy

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In the 1970s, no longer a national figure, Cohn frequented gay bars semi-openly, but still denied all rumors and lent his support to anti-gay political campaigns. During debates over New York City's first gay rights law, he said homosexuals should not be allowed to be schoolteachers.

Related Topics:
Gay bar - Gay rights

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In 1984, he was diagnosed with AIDS, and attempted to keep his condition secret while receiving aggressive drug treatment. He insisted to his dying day that his disease was liver cancer. A fictional portrayal of Cohn was a major character in Tony Kushner's '. Cohn never spoke publicly about AIDS but, according to his friends, he claimed to have used his political influence to increase the government's investment in AIDS research.

Related Topics:
1984 - AIDS - Liver cancer - Tony Kushner's

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He died on August 2, 1986 of complications from AIDS.

Related Topics:
August 2 - 1986

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While most conservative political figures have preferred to distance themselves from the legacy of McCarthyism, some have defended McCarthy and Cohn's anti-Communist crusade, most notably conservative writer Ann Coulter in her book Treason. Their support became especially notable after the 1995 public release of the Venona Project, which offered evidence that there indeed were Communists in the U.S. government.

Related Topics:
McCarthyism - Ann Coulter - 1995 - Venona Project

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