Tag Archives: Roy Cohn

Gay History – March 1950: The Lavender Scare – McCarthy and Cohn Hunt Homosexuals in the Federal Government

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The Lavender Scare blew wide open in the nation’s newspapers in March of 1950 when arch-conservative columnist George Sokolsky, an early admirer of Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) and  Roy Cohn, (pictured above) took to his column to blast the U.S. State Department, once again, for harboring “known Communists” and worse.  HOMOSEXUALS!

Wrote Sokolsky:

When Maximillian Harden, the German journalist, called attention to a similar camarilla in the Kaiser’s court, involving Prince Eulenburg, it shocked and astonished the world. Yet, in this generation, in the United States, a charge that 91 employees of the state department were dismissed for being homosexuals passes with little excitement.

And so the Lavender Scare began.

The Lavender Scare is a rarely talked about but an  important part of our history and the persecution we have endured.  In the 1950’s during the anti-communist campaign known as McCarthyism. Gay men and lesbians were often considered “fellow travelers” of the communists, with McCarthy also charging not only that the government had been infiltrated by homosexuals, and that they posed a threat equally as grave to national security because gay men and lesbians could be blackmailed into revealing state secrets.  The lavender scare began “may be seen as the time when homosexuals became the chief scapegoats of the Cold War because of fear, bigotry and hatred.

The Lavender Scare

In 1950, the same year that Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed 205 communists were working in the State Department.

On April 19, 1950, the Republican National Chairman Guy George Gabrielson said that “sexual perverts who have infiltrated our Government in recent years” were perhaps as “dangerous as the actual Communists”. 

Continue reading Gay History – March 1950: The Lavender Scare – McCarthy and Cohn Hunt Homosexuals in the Federal Government →

Gay History - February 22: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Andy Warhol Dies, and Roy Cohn's Birthday at Studio 54

Gay History – February 22: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Andy Warhol Dies, and Roy Cohn’s Birthday at Studio 54

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February 22nd.

1892: Popular openly bisexual poet Edna St. Vincent Millay is born. Milay received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the third woman to win the award for poetry, and was also known for her feminist activism. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work.

Millay’s 1920 collection A Few Figs From Thistles drew controversy for its exploration of female sexuality and feminism. In 1919, she wrote the anti-war play Aria da Capo, which starred her sister Norma Millay at the Provincetown Playhouse in New York City. -Weaver”; she was the third woman to win a Pulitzer.

What wasn’t widely publicized is that Milay also identified herself as bisexual, having many affairs with both women and men before her marriage.

During her years at Vassar, she was said to have begun her exploration into relationships with women, some of which were deeply passionate. This included English actress Edith Wynne Matthison, who was twice her age.

They wrote to each other. In one of the letters, Millay wrote: “You wrote me a beautiful letter. I wonder if you meant it to be as beautiful as it was. I think you did; for somehow I know that your feeling for me, however slight it is, is the nature of love.”

“When you tell me to come, I will come, by the next train, just as I am. This is now meekness, be assured; I do not come naturally by meekness know that it is a proud surrender to You,” she added.

When she got married in 1923, Millay and Eugen Boissevain, her husband, had an agreement that their marriage would be sexually “open.”

Millay once claimed her husband allowed her personal freedom, and that they lived like two bachelors.

Learn more about Edna St. Vincent Millay HERE

1979: Studio 54 throws a gala fifty-second birthday party for the despicable closeted gay attorney and former McCarthyite Roy Cohn. The event draws several hundreds of the city’s luminaries – including Donald Trump, Barbara Walters, members of both Democratic and Republican parties and most of the city’s elected officials.

If you’re indicted, you’re invited!’ comedian Joey Adams joked. ‘Cohn invited 150 guests. Three thousand to four thousand showed up,’ said Steve Rubell, owner of Studio 54 and a principal client of Roy Cohn’s.(Cohn defended Rubell after the raids at Studio 54) His exclusive guest list included all his influential clients and the powerful people that had open accounts in his ‘favor bank.’ 

The evening unraveled like most debauched nights under the legendary disco ball. Rubell commissioned a custom birthday cake that bore the image of Roy crowned with a halo.

7 years later Roy Cohn would be dead of AIDS denying he was gay to his very last breath.

Learn more about the most hated and feared closeted gay man in America Roy Cohn by clicking HERE

1987: Andy Warhol dies at the age of 58.

Lesbian anarchist and man-hater Valerie Solanas entered Andy Warhol’s sixth-floor office at 33 Union Square West on June 3, 1968, carrying two guns and a massive, paranoid grudge, and shot Warhol. No one would have guessed it would kill him 19 years later.

Two bullets from Solanas’ gun tore through Warhol’s stomach, liver, spleen, esophagus and both lungs. He was briefly declared dead at one point, but doctors were able to revive him. He spent two months in the hospital recuperating from various surgeries, and would be forced to wear a surgical corset for the rest of his life to hold his organs in place.

The shooting had a major impact on Wahol’s life and work, even beyond the considerable physical scars it left. He became much more guarded, abandoning much of his filmmaking and more controversial art and focusing more on business, founding what became Interview magazine in 1969.

The shooting intensified Warhol’s fear and loathing of hospitals, though he embraced alternative health treatments like healing crystals. This reticence produced fatal results on February 21, 1987, when Warhol died of cardiac arrest suffered after gallbladder surgery, a procedure that he had delayed for several years due to his fear of hospitals. 

Learn more about the shooting of Andy Warhol by Valerie Solanas by clicking HERE.

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Gay History – February 20, 1927 – August 03, 1986: Roy Cohn The Most Evil, Self Loathing, Despicable Closet Case In History

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In our history we have heroes and villains  And there could be no one more villainous and despicable in gay history than the monster named Roy Cohn.

Cohn born to an observant Jewish family in The Bronx, New York City on February 20th, 1927 howed signs of legal brilliance early, having been admitted to the bar at twenty-one, becoming an Assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan and playing a prominent role in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1951. Cohn always took great pride in the Rosenberg verdict and claimed to have played an even greater part than his public role. He said in his autobiography that his own influence had led to both Chief Prosecutor Saypol and Judge Irving Kaufman being appointed to the case. He further said that Kaufman imposed the death penalty, based on his personal recommendation

In 1952, Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) appointed him as chief counsel to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on the recommendation of FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, where Cohn became known for his aggressive questioning of “suspected” Communists. Cohn preferred not to hold hearings in open forums, which went well with McCarthy’s preference for holding “executive sessions” and “off-the-record” sessions away from the Capitol in order to minimize public scrutiny and to question witnesses with relative impunity. Cohn was given free rein in pursuit of many investigations, with McCarthy joining in only for the more publicized sessions.

Cohn invited his “friend” G. David Schine, an anti-Communist propagandist, to join McCarthy’s staff as a consultant. When Schine was drafted into the US Army in 1953, Cohn made repeated and extensive efforts to procure special treatment for Schine. He contacted military officials from the Secretary of the Army down to Schine’s company commander and demanded for Schine to be given light duties, extra leave, and exemption from overseas assignment. light duties, extra leave, an exemption from overseas assignment — and threatened to “wreck the Army” if they didn’t accede to his demands. The bitter irony of all this is that while Cohn was pursuing special treatment for his “special friend”, McCarthy’s witch hunt extended beyond communists to also include gay people. (See The Lavender Scare) That conflict, along with McCarthy’s accusations of Communists in the defense department, led to the Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954, in which among other developments the Army charged Cohn and McCarthy with using improper pressure on Schine’s behalf, and McCarthy and Cohn countercharged that the Army was holding Schine “hostage” in an attempt to squelch McCarthy’s investigations into Communists in the Army. During the hearings, a photograph of Schine was introduced, and Joseph N. Welch, the Army’s attorney in the hearings, accused Cohn of doctoring the image to show Schine alone with Army Secretary Robert T. Stevens.  Welch asked the staffer sarcastically, “Did you think it came from a pixie?” McCarthy interjected, “Will counsel (Welch) for my benefit define– I think he might be an expert on that– what a pixie is?” Welch responded, “Yes. I should say, Mr. Senator, that a pixie is a close relative of a fairy.” in a jab at Cohn. Others in the chamber who were in on the rumors, broke into laughter. Cohn later called the remark, “malicious,” “wicked,” and “indecent.”

Although the findings of the hearings blamed Cohn rather than McCarthy, they are widely considered an important element of McCarthy’s disgrace. After the Army–McCarthy hearings, Cohn resigned from McCarthy’s staff and went into private practice.

After leaving McCarthy, Cohn had a 30-year career as an attorney in New York City. His clients included Donald Trump, Mafia figures Tony Salerno, Carmine Galante, and John Gotti, Studio 54 owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, Texas financier and philanthropist Shearn Moody, Jr., and the New York Yankees baseball club. He was known for his active social life, charitable giving, and combative personality. In the early 1960s he became a member of the John Birch Society and a principal figure in the Western Goals Foundation. He maintained close ties in conservative political circles.  Cohn’s frequent phone pals included Nancy Reagan and the former C.I.A. director William Casey, who “called Roy almost daily during [Reagan’s] 1st election.”  Cohn was also as an informal advisor to Richard Nixon.

Cohn was also friends with the now “President” Donald Trump, and sought advice after they first met asking: How should he and his father respond to Justice Department allegations that their company had systematically discriminated against black people seeking housing?

“My view is tell them to go to hell,” Cohn said, “and fight the thing in court.”

Cohn also showed Trump how to exploit power and instill fear through a simple formula: attack, counterattack and never apologize.

Donald Trump prized Roy Cohn’s friendship and his reputation for aggression. According to a New York Times profile a quarter-century ago, when frustrated by an adversary, Trump would pull out a photograph of Cohn and ask, “Would you rather deal with him?”

Continue reading Gay History – February 20, 1927 – August 03, 1986: Roy Cohn The Most Evil, Self Loathing, Despicable Closet Case In History →

Gay History – September 7, 1952: Sen. Joseph McCarthy Brags About The Destruction of 145 Gay “Deviant” Lives

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Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) and closet-case right-hand henchman Roy Cohn’s  (pictured above)  anti-Communist hearings are a dark, and sinister stain in Gay and Lesbian history as well as in America history.  

McCarthy’s campaign was not to only root out suspected “subversives” and communist it was also to witch hunt  gays and lesbians as well.  Gay men and women were actively rooted out of all levels of government employment. Gays were seen not only as morally suspect, but also a security risk and a dangerous influence in government offices. In 1952, McCarthy published a book titled McCarthyism: The Fight For America, in which he laid out his crusade to rid the country of “Communists and perverts.”

As part of his book’s promotion, McCarthy answered several question from the editor of the Milwaukee Sentinel where he proudly took credit for the removal of 145 “deviates” from Government employment:

QUESTION: How many sex deviates have been removed from the State Department?

ANSWER:  Ninety-one were forced to resign from the State Department prior to 1950 and 54 since that time. The Senate Special Investigating Committee had this to say about those who were allowed to resign: “In most of those cases, these known homosexuals were allowed to resign for ‘personal reasons,’ and no information was placed in the regular personnel files of the state Department indicating the real reason for resignation nor was the Civil Service Commission informed of the true reason for the resignation … Die ot the manner in which these cases were mishandled, 23 of those 91 state Department employees found there way into other departments of government.”

QUESTION: Do you claim that the sex deviates removed from the State Department were all disloyal?

ANSWER:  No, but all were considered security risks. One reason why sex deviates are considered by all intelligence agencies of the government to be security risks in that they are subject to blackmail. Is is a known fact that espionage agents often have been successful in extorting information from them by threatening to expose their abnormal habits.

The Special Senate Investigating Committee had this to say about the high percentage of sex deviates in government: “The homosexual has a tendency to gather other perverts around him. Eminent psychiatrists have informed the subcommittee that the homosexual is likely to seek his own kind because the pressures of society are such that he feels uncomfortable unless his is with his own kind. Due to this situation the homosexual tends to surround himself with other homosexuals, not only in his social but in his business life. Under these circumstances, if a homosexual attains a position in government where he can influence the hiring of personnel, it is almost inevitable that he will attempt to place other homosexuals in government jobs.”

The most ironic part of this piece of history is that the original evil and “self-loathing quisling” of the GOP: Roy Cohn served as McCarthy’s right hand man. During one of McCarthy’s televised hearings into the supposed influence of communists in the U.S. Army, attorney Joseph Welch accused McCarthy of accepting a doctored photo as evidence. Referring to Cohn, Welch asked McCarthy whether the photo “came from a pixie.” When McCarthy asked what a pixie was, Welch replied “a close relative of a fairy.”

Cohn would later die of AIDS alone in 1986.

The Names Project’s AIDS-memorial quilt features one square that was anonymously added that reads: “Roy Cohn: Bully, Coward, Victim.”

roy-cohn

Gay History – July 2, 1953: U.S. State Department Fires 381 Gay and Lesbian Employees

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In the early 1950’s, the entire country was in the grips of the Red Scare as Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy was conducting his witch hunts. One of his main platforms would be the Senate’s Subcommittee on the Investigation of Loyalty of State Department Employees. While McCarthy’s main targets were imaginary Communists in the State Department, gay employees were also seen as “subversives” in need of rooting out.

Both homosexuals and Communist Party members were seen as subversive elements in American society who all shared the same ideals of antitheism, rejection of the middle-class morality, and lack of conformity. In the eyes of the Government  they were seen as scheming and manipulative and, most importantly, would put their own agendas above others in the eyes of the general population. McCarthy also associated homosexuality and communism as “threats to the ‘American way of life’.” Homosexuality was directly linked to security concerns, and more government employees were dismissed because of their homosexual sexual orientation than because they were left-leaning or communist. George Chauncey noted that, “The specter of the invisible homosexual, like that of the invisible communist, haunted Cold War America,” and homosexuality (and by implication homosexuals themselves) were constantly referred to not only as a disease, but also as an invasion, like the perceived danger of communism and subversives

Among the more high-profile targets was Samuel Reber, a twenty-seven year career diplomat who announced his retirement in May of 1953 after McCarthy charged that he was a security risk — which was a barely-concealed code for homosexual. By then, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had already responded to McCarthy’s witch hunt by signing an executive order mandated the firing of all federal employees who were deemed guilty of “sexual perversion,” whether proven or not. Eisenhower also announced a re-organization of the State Department. Rep. Charles B Brownson, an Indiana Republican with his own lesser-known witch hunt underway in the House Government Operations Committee, asked the State Department for a progress report in rooting out homosexuals.

On July 2, 1953, the State Department’s chief security officer R.W. Scott McLeod revealed that 351 homosexuals and 150 other “security risks” had been fired between 1950 and 1953.

Gay History - April 26, 1977: Studio 54 Opens in NYC

Gay History – April 26, 1977: Studio 54 Opens in NYC

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On this day in 1977, crowds gathered outside 254 West 54th Street in New York City waiting and hoping for a chance to enter what would soon become the global epicenter of the disco craze and the most famous nightclub in the world: Studio 54,.

The masterminds behind Studio 54 were Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, college roommates at Syracuse University who got into the nightclub business after their first venture, a chain of steak restaurants, failed to flourish. But before taking Manhattan by storm and becoming famous for openly and shamelessly excluding all but the most chic, famous or beautiful patrons from their establishment.

Rubell and Schrager sunk about $400,000 to renovate the old CBS studio which was a giant risk.

Image result for studio 54

A relatively unknown woman who deserves the lion’s share of the credit for making 54 into the celebrity playground that it became was Carmen D’Alessio, a public-relations entrepreneur in the fashion industry, whose Rolodex included names like Bianca Jagger, Liza Minnelli, Andy Warhol and Truman Capote. Her buzz-building turned the grand opening into a major item in the New York gossip columns, and her later efforts—like having Bianca Jagger ride a white horse into the club for her 30th birthday party—stoked the public’s fascination with Studio 54 even further. Not just the usual celebrity suspects—actors, models, musicians and athletes—but also political figures like Margaret Trudeau, and even Jackie Onassis.

Image result for studio 54

We’ll never know the amount of cocaine that went up nostrils at Studio 54 – suffice it to say, the tons of glitter dumped from the ceiling helped conceal the thin layer of wall-to-wall powder.  While blue-collar Americans stood in line to never make it past the velvet rope, the popular people snorted and cavorted under big sparkly disco balls.  

via GIPHY

Ian Schrager, took more of a behind-the-scenes role, but Steve Rubell basked in the glory of his newfound celebrity status.  Rubell was often spotted in gay NYC clubs, and was infamous for pressuring his own bartenders and busboys to sleep with him to stay employed and get ahead, but still, for some reason, remained in the closet.  Soon, this double lifestyle and intense drug use took its toll.

Rubell could be a real dick to his employees.  Attribute it to his drug use and insane lifestyle if you wish, but whatever the case, it created some disgruntled employees…. one in particular would cause the whole thing to come crashing down.

A male waiter went to the IRS and told them about Rubell and Schrager’s shady bookkeeping practices.  Apparently, they had been keeping vast sums of cash in Hefty garbage bags and stowing them in the ceiling.  Turns out, Rubell and Schrager had only paid $8,000 in taxes since they opened, while were making more than $75,000 per night.

Rubell hired close friend and the infamous and vilest closet case lawyer Roy Cohn to represent him and also bargained with the IRS, saying he would reveal a big secret if they’d be lenient.

Image result for steve rubell roy cohn

The secret? Rubell claimed that President Carter’s Chief of Staff, Hamilton Jordan, had snorted cocaine in the Studio 54 basement.  The allegations couldn’t be substantiated, but they made life miserable for Jordan.  They brought scandal to the White House and had the FBI knocking on Jordan’s door.

In the end, Rubell and Schrager pled guilty and were sentenced to three years in prison.

Studio 54 was over.  Liza Minnelli sung “New York, New York” at the farewell party and the doors were closed.  It reopened in the 1980s under new management, but it just wasn’t the same.  Disco was dead.

After serving their sentences, Rubell and Schrager amazingly rebounded and became “respectable” hotel operators – making more money than ever.

Steve Rubell died of AIDS in 1989, but Ian Schrager has kept the hotel business thriving to this day.

Image result for studio 54
Image result for studio 54
Image result for studio 54
Image result for studio 54

Congressional Democrats Push for US Apology To “Hundreds Of Thousands” Fired LGBT Federal Workers

Congressional Democrats Push for US Apology To “Hundreds Of Thousands” Fired LGBT Federal Workers

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Vis NBC News reports:

LGBT civil servants and service members were systematically fired or forced to resign due to their sexual orientation or gender identity over the past seven decades, and a proposed bill is seeking to have the federal government issue an official apology acknowledging its past discriminatory policies.

The bill, introduced Thursday by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., says the federal government “discriminated against and terminated hundreds of thousands” of LGBTQ people who served in the armed forces, the foreign service and the federal civil service for decades, “causing untold harm to those individuals professionally, financially, socially, and medically, among other harms.”

Kaine and Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., the country’s first openly gay U.S. senator, led the introduction of the resolution. The document is co-sponsored by Democratic Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), among others.

Learn more about LGBT federal worker persecution:

Gay History – April 17, 1965: Frank Kameny Leads The First Gay & Lesbian Protest At The White House

Gay History – March 1950: The Lavender Scare – McCarthy and Cohn Hunt Homosexuals in the Federal Government

Justice Department Ordered to Release 1950’s Gay ‘Purge’ Lavender Scare Documents

LEARN YOUR HISTORY! – April 27, 1953: President Eisenhower Signs Executive Order Banning Homosexuals From Working for the Federal Government

WATCH: The Trailer for ‘Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn’ - HBO Documentary

WATCH: The Trailer for ‘Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn’ – HBO Documentary

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Bully, Coward, Victim: Roy Cohn

A new documentary of one of the most evil closet-cases that ever walked the face of the earth: “Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn”, by Ivy Meeropol which will debut on HBO later this month.

Via Deadline:

The documentary draws on unearthed archival material and audiotapes to paint a portrait of Cohn’s life from the late 1950s as chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy, through to the 1980s when he embedded himself in the Reagan White House as a “rabid anti-homosexuality activist and political mentor” to current U.S. president Donald Trump before dying of AIDS in 1986.

“Roy Cohn made his name prosecuting and pushing for the execution of my grandparents Ethel and Julius Rosenberg,” said Meeropol. “Many years later he became Donald Trump’s lawyer, mentor and close friend. If there was ever a time to reflect on how we got here it is now. I am so grateful for the opportunity to share the film with HBO audiences.”

The title of the documentary was inspired by Roy Cohn’s anonymously made panel on the AIDS memorial quilt. which reads, “Roy Cohn: Bully, Coward, Victim.” A fitting eulogy if there ever was one.

“Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn” will premiere on HBO on June 19th.

Bully, Coward, Victim: Roy Cohn

Donald Trump Biopic To Feature Evil Self Loathing Vile Mentor The Late Roy Cohn

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Via the Hollywood Reporter:

Donald Trump is getting the big-screen treatment in a film called The Apprentice that will dramatize his rise to power, focusing on his early influences like attorney Roy Cohn.

Gabriel Sherman, special correspondent to Vanity Fair, who also authored a book about late Fox News founder Roger Ailes, The Loudest Voice in the Room, has been tapped to write the original screenplay for Amy Baer, who is producing the pic through her Gidden Media.

“As a journalist, I’ve reported on Donald Trump for more than 15 years,” Sherman said Wednesday in a statement. “I’ve long been fascinated by his origin story as a young builder coming up in the gritty world of 1970s and ’80s New York. This formative period tells us so much about the man who today occupies the Oval Office.”

For those of you who do not know or are too young to know there could be no more of a villainous and despicable man in all of gay history as the monster named Roy Cohn.

In 1952, Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) appointed him as chief counsel to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on the recommendation of FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, where Cohn became known for his aggressive questioning of “suspected” Communists ruining hundreds of lives and sending Ethel and Julius Rosenberg to the electric chair.

Cohn preferred not to hold hearings in open forums, which went well with McCarthy’s preference for holding “executive sessions” and “off-the-record” sessions away from the Capitol in order to minimize public scrutiny and to question witnesses with relative impunity. Cohn was given free rein in pursuit of many investigations, with McCarthy joining in only for the more publicized sessions.

Cohn invited his “friend” G. David Schine, an anti-Communist propagandist, to join McCarthy’s staff as a consultant. When Schine was drafted into the US Army in 1953, Cohn made repeated and extensive efforts to procure special treatment for Schine. He contacted military officials from the Secretary of the Army down to Schine’s company commander and demanded for Schine to be given light duties, extra leave, and exemption from overseas assignment. light duties, extra leave, an exemption from overseas assignment — and threatened to “wreck the Army” if they didn’t accede to his demands. The bitter irony of all this is that while Cohn was pursuing special treatment for his “special friend”, McCarthy’s witch hunt extended beyond communists to also include gay people. (See The Lavender Scare) That conflict, along with McCarthy’s accusations of Communists in the defense department, led to the Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954, in which among other developments the Army charged Cohn and McCarthy with using improper pressure on Schine’s behalf, and McCarthy and Cohn countercharged that the Army was holding Schine “hostage” in an attempt to squelch McCarthy’s investigations into Communists in the Army. During the hearings, a photograph of Schine was introduced, and Joseph N. Welch, the Army’s attorney in the hearings, accused Cohn of doctoring the image to show Schine alone with Army Secretary Robert T. Stevens.  Welch asked the staffer sarcastically, “Did you think it came from a pixie?” McCarthy interjected, “Will counsel (Welch) for my benefit define– I think he might be an expert on that– what a pixie is?” Welch responded, “Yes. I should say, Mr. Senator, that a pixie is a close relative of a fairy.” in a jab at Cohn. Others in the chamber who were in on the rumors, broke into laughter. Cohn later called the remark, “malicious,” “wicked,” and “indecent.”

After leaving McCarthy, Cohn had a 30-year career as an attorney in New York City. His clients included Trump, Mafia figures Tony Salerno, Carmine Galante, and John Gotti, Studio 54 owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, Texas financier and philanthropist Shearn Moody, Jr., and the New York Yankees baseball club. He was known for his active social life, charitable giving, and combative personality. In the early 1960s he became a member of the John Birch Society and a principal figure in the Western Goals Foundation. He maintained close ties in conservative political circles.  Cohn’s frequent phone pals included Nancy Reagan and the former C.I.A. director William Casey, who “called Roy almost daily during [Reagan’s] 1st election.”  Cohn was also as an informal advisor to Richard Nixo

Donald Trump, and sought advice after they first met asking: How should he and his father respond to Justice Department allegations that their company had systematically discriminated against black people seeking housing?

“My view is tell them to go to hell,” Cohn said, “and fight the thing in court.”

Cohn also showed Trump how to exploit power and instill fear through a simple formula: attack, counterattack and never apologize.

Trump prized Cohn’s friendship and his reputation for aggression. According to a New York Times profile a quarter-century ago, when frustrated by an adversary, Trump would pull out a photograph of Cohn and ask, “Would you rather deal with him?”

In a 2008 article published in The New Yorker magazine Jeffrey Toobin quotes Roger Stone on Cohn’s homosexuality: “Roy was not gay. He was a man who liked having sex with men. Gays were weak, effeminate. He always seemed to have these young blond boys around. It just wasn’t discussed. He was interested in power and access.  Stone worked with Cohn beginning with the Reagan campaign during the Republican Party presidential primaries, 1976.

While publicly closeted and working actively against gay rights, Cohn partied at the best gay bars and threw lavish parties in New York and Provincetown. 

In 1984, Roy Cohn was diagnosed with AIDS.

Cohn used his connections to jump to the head of the line for treatment with the then-scarce and experimental AZT. By the time he died in 1986, he maintained his public denial both of his homosexuality and his disease — he said it was “cancer.” In Tony Kushner’s Angels In America, Cohn is portrayed as a power hungry, self-loathing hypocrite who is dying of AIDS while haunted by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg. Cohn’s name is also on a panel of the AIDS memorial quilt. It reads: “Roy Cohn: Bully, Coward, Victim.”

A fitting eulogy if there ever was one.

Gay Traitor Ken Mehlman Launches Non-Profit to Attract GOP to Fight for Marriage Equality

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Loathsome former closet-case and  RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman who at one time was  George W Bush’s campaign manager and directly helped 21 states pass laws that banned same-sex marriage,  it unconstitutional and ruined hundred of thousands of LGBT lives ” has launched Project Right Side, a non-profit aimed at attracting conservatives to the fight for marriage equality.

Writes Mehlman in a WSJ op-ed announcing the project:

Some misperceive the issue of marriage equality as exclusively progressive. Yet what could be more conservative than support for more freedom and less government? And what freedom is more basic than the right to marry the person you love? Smaller, less intrusive government surely includes an individual deciding whom to marry. Allowing civil marriage for same-sex couples will cultivate community stability, encourage fidelity and commitment, and foster family values.

Mehlman argues that same-sex marriage is an idea conservatives should embrace:

Conservatives don’t need to change core convictions to embrace the growing support for equal rights for gay Americans. It is sufficient to recognize the inherent conservatism in citizens’ desire to marry, to be judged on their work, and not to be singled out for higher taxes or bullying at school. These objectives can be achieved while also protecting religious liberty, as demonstrated by states enacting civil marriage with exemptions for religious institutions.

To help Republicans appreciate this changing environment, I helped establish Project Right Side, which commissioned leading GOP polling firm Target Point to survey 16,000 voters over the past year, over-sampling Republican and swing voters in battleground states, including 2,000 such voters on Election Night.

Well isn;t that special?

The man who was responsible for demonizing gays during the Bush years so the GOP could keep political power while standing in his Wayerford cryatal closet and making MILLIONS of dollars off the GOP has stated a non-profit to help the GOP see the light of gay.

Not only is this a little too little a little too late and comes nowhere near making up for the damage that Mehlman did to the LGBT community during his reign of terror.  It’s also nothing more than utter PR bullshit for Mehlman who is still donating heavily to anti-gay GOP candidates and who recently  co-chaired a re-election fundraiser for John Boehner the man who has vowed to stop the overturning of DOMA and who  tripled the legal budget of Congress  to defend the unconstitutional law after President Obama and the DOJ said they would no longer continue to.

Mehlman is a disgusting opportunist and now that he is “out” and trying to live as an openly gay man his past is haunting him.  Many in out community loath him and rightfully so and he knows that.  If he were doing this from his heart I might agree that “better late than never” and “forget the past” but he’s supporting marriage equality now for the EXACT same reasons that he used it against us and Democrats in 2004 and years thereafter; because he believes that being FOR marriage equality is NOW A POLITICAL AND PERSONAL  WINNER FOR HIM AND HIM ALONE.

Mehlman bullied us and kicked sand in our faces, hurt our families and used us to serve your own ends when it suited him and now he is doing nothing but the same.

And don’t  be surprised if the Human Rights Campaign and Gay Inc. applaud Ken Hehlman for this,   Mehlman has money, and if it’s the one thing that the HRC loves it money and they will have no problem taking  it from Mehlman and defending him even though Ken Mehlman’s legacy is no better than Roy Cohn’s.

Integrity in the Gay Inc. is non-existent.

As for Mehlman you are a disgrace.  And while you may fool some.  You do not fool me and others.

You deserve your legacy of being the most hated gay man in America.

You are a digrace to our commnity and humanity.