ABSTRACT
In 1986 Roy Cohn died in a US Hospital. He had AIDS, he was a secret homosexual. He was also violently right-wing, a close aid of Joseph McCarthy during the witch hunts and a prosecutor of the Rosenbergs. He is remembered in a panel in the AIDS Memorial Quilt that reads ‘Roy Cohn-Coward/Bully/ Victim’ and he is also remembered in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America plays. Kushner explores, as one theme in his plays, the question of how broad and embracing the gay sense of community is. Does it encompass an implacable foe like Roy Cohn? At one point Belize, the black gay male nurse caring for Roy, tells him of the likely treatments he will be offered in hospital: radiation and double-blind drug-trial protocols. He advises that these are offered in the interests of medicine and not of the patient and tells Roy to reject them. Roy wants to know why the nurse is telling him this: ‘I think you have little reason to want to help me.’ Belize replies, ‘Consider it solidarity. One faggot to another’ (Kushner, 1994, p. 13).
