Roy Cohn was the worst kind of coward. The kind who persecuted others to protect his own secret.

That secret was his homosexuality. As chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Cohn wielded enormous power, the power to destroy lives and careers.

Most people equate the McCarthy era with the communist witch-hunts of the 1950’s, the largest instance of mass hysteria since the Salem Witch Trials. Thousands of Americans – entertainers, politicians and ordinary citizens – were summoned before McCarthy’s subcommittee and forced to answer charges – rumors – that they were either communists or communist sympathizers.

Those who refused to cooperate were blacklisted or jailed. Those who wanted to save their careers and reputations implicated others. Lives, careers and reputations were ruined.

Cohn and McCarthy also targeted gays.

There is no doubt that Cohn, who died in 1986 of AIDS, was gay. There is also no doubt that he used his position to carry out an unprecedented persecution of gays working in government, a period that became known as the Lavender Scare.

To understand Cohn and McCarthy’s motivation to target homosexuals, one must first understand how they came to know each other.

Cohn, a young attorney seeking to make a name for himself, was recommended to McCarthy by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

In 1952, McCarthy was outed by a Nevada journalist. McCarthy denied the accusation, and the national media refused to carry the story. A year later, McCarthy married an aide who worked in his office.

Marriages of convenience were (are still) commonplace in Washington and in Hollywood. When rumors of Rock Hudson’s homosexuality surfaced, his studio quickly married him off to a studio secretary. They soon divorced.

Admittedly, no one wanted to believe Rock Hudson, the Brad Pitt of his day, was gay. His studio stood to lose one of their biggest grossing stars. Straight America continued to deny Hudson’s sexuality until his death from AIDS in 1985.

Likewise, many people don’t want to accept that politicians, especially those who have championed anti-gay laws, are themselves gay – in spite of overwhelming evidence.

Consider Republican Senator Larry Craig. In 1982, then-Representative Craig was implicated in the first congressional page scandal. In 1983, he got married. Twenty-four years later, Senator Larry Craig was arrested in a men’s room in the Minneapolis airport for soliciting sex from an undercover policeman. Craig is just the tip of the closeted Republican iceberg. Space limitations, unfortunately, don’t allow me to mention others.

A confirmed bachelor, Hoover maintained an intimate relationship with Clyde Tolson, the associate director of the FBI, with whom he rode to work daily, ate meals, vacationed and to whom Hoover left his entire estate.

Following Hoover’s death, Tolson was presented the American flag that draped Hoover’s coffin; he then moved into Hoover’s home, where he lived until his death. Tolson is buried near Hoover in the Congressional Cemetery.

Some scholars, ignoring the obvious, refuse to admit that there was anything more between Hoover and Tolson than a brotherly relationship.

Then again, some scholars deny that Walt Whitman, the American poet who wrote, “In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me, and his arm lay lightly around my breast – and that night I was happy,” was gay.

It might seem fantastic – unbelievable – that a closeted gay FBI director would recommend a closeted attorney to a closeted senator to rout out homosexuals. Admittedly, it does sound like the stuff of novels. Truth, as they say, can be stranger than fiction.

In 2004, gay activist and BlogActive.com founder Mike Rogers founded the Roy Cohn Award, which he bestows annually upon a gay Washington staffer whose boss works against gay rights. It shouldn’t be any surprise that all the winners have worked for Republicans, though Rogers insists that the award is non-partisan.

This year’s Roy Cohn Award winner is Mark Buse, John McCain’s semi-closeted chief of staff. Buse’s homosexuality, which is an open secret on the Hill, was confirmed to Rogers by Buse’s former lover, his former lover’s mother, as well as other Washington insiders.

Granted, McCain is not the only Republican politician to employ openly gay staffers. On the contrary, Washington’s dirty little secret is that many key staffers to Republican congressmen are gay; so many in fact, Evangelical leaders like James Dobson have accused gay Republican staffers, the so-called “pink mafia,” of trying to destroy the Republican Party from within. If only gay staffers had so much influence.

Gay staffers who work for Republicans often point to the fact that their bosses are “accepting.” Accepting of what? Of gay men whose self-worth is so low that they seek the approval of straight men who believe gays are second-class citizens?

So why does Buse deserve such an ignominious award?

It’s not that Buse is a gay man working for a Republican politician. It’s that Buse is a gay man who works for a politician who actively supports anti-gay legislation.

Rogers wonders, as do I, how Buse can work for a politician who thinks that gays don’t deserve equal rights, that we shouldn’t be allowed to serve openly in the armed forces, that we shouldn’t be able to marry and that we shouldn’t be able to adopt children.

What’s more, how can Buse – or any gay staffer – work for a man who promises to appoint Supreme Court justices that could potentially overturn Lawrence v. Texas, a move that would re-criminalize consensual sex between gay men?

Hence the Roy Cohn Award.

On a purely personal note, I wonder if Buse understands how lucky he is to work in John McCain’s Washington rather than in Roy Cohn’s Washington. I also wonder if Buse is the kind of man who would have kept quiet or named names.

My guess is he would have squealed like a cockatoo.

George Henson is a lecturer of foreign languages and literatures. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].