Persecutor and Victim

The 80s in many ways was a watershed decade. Life and death struggles and suffocating lies paradoxically brought about a new maturity in the American landscape, because the truth did will out. The decade of AIDS reinforced activism in the sense that those who needed to fended for themsleves and took their prognoses into their own hands.

Twenty years ago today, Roy Cohn died of AIDS in Bethesda, MD: handmaiden to Senator Joseph McCarthy imortalized by Al Pacino in Angels in America and James Woods in Citizen Cohn. On July 14, 1986 Mr. Cohn told People magazine that he was not dying of AIDS. He also denied being a homosexual, adding that Barbara Walters was the love of his life.

It is that event in the history of homosexuality in America and in the history of politics in America that puts very much into perspective.