Hello and welcome to the 10th and final episode of Season 1 of Bad Gays, a podcast where we uncover the dark side of gay men in history.

I'm Hugh Lemmy, a writer and writer, a writer, gay historian, and member of the Board of the Gay Museum in Berlin.

And each episode, we profile a different gay villain from history, looking at their life in context,

and how their sexuality informed their infamy.

We want to complicate gay history by talking about evil people and complicated people.

We're focusing on men because cis men are definitionally the most bad,

and we want to ask why we don't remember our villains as well as we sometimes remember our heroes.

So last week we talked about the killers Leopold and Loeb,

who allowed us to explore class and the medicalization of sexuality in early 20th

century America. Who are we talking about this week, Hugh? This week, we're talking about Roy Cohn.

Yich. Many of our listeners, I'm sure, will know Roy Cohn from his representation in Tony Kushner's

epic two-part play about the AIDS crisis in New York called Angels in America, a gay

fantasia on national themes,

and also from Al Pacino's portrayal of that role in the 2003 miniseries that's based on the play.

And if you've not seen Angels in America, I think we'd probably both recommend it highly.

Absolutely.

And in that play, Cohn is referred to as the pole star of human evil.

Not inaccurately, I don't think.

Roy Marcus Cone was born in New York in 1927 into an observant Jewish family.

His father was a judge, Albert C. Cone, and he was influential in a Democratic Party in New York at the time.

Cone followed his father into law.

He graduated from Columbia Law School by the age of 20,

...