Auerbach

This is a discussion with Dr. Aerbach.  I had remarked that Roy Cohn  was a witchunter, but that he had courage in the early 1950s allowing people to know he was gay during the Un-American trials. He did this inadvertently by furthering, or attempting to further the career, quite publicly of his partner, Schine, another member of McCarthy's committee. Dr.  Auerbach corrected me and noted that reprehensible was a more apt word than 'courageous, to which I replied that his courageousness possibly was a form of sociopathic underarsoual. 

Auerbach continues...

As for Roy Cohn, he began his career carrying water for one of the most reprehensible figures in American politics—and he never repented.  Instead, he made a career of defending the reprehensible, our current President among them. For a control group, consider that RFK was Democratic counsel on that committee, and he only improved, becoming one of the best figures in American politics.  

Worse yet because it shows the depth of his moral rot or gay self-hatred or both, Cohn was involved not only in McCarthy’s Red Scare but also in his Lavender Scare.  Perhaps he thought that this conduct would draw heat away from his plainly visible homosexuality, but that is the most charitable explanation I can come up with.  Roy Cohn eventually died of AIDS, but to his dying breath, he attempted to preserve his reputation by denying his illness and his orientation, this at a time when out gay men were willing to take to the streets to demand better care.  In this regard, please remember ACT UP—AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power. Cohn’s coming out would have provide moral support to gay men everywhere and might have encouraged the dedication of more resources to the fight against the virus.  Instead, although he was a rich, powerful old man with little to lose, he decided to protect himself instead of taking a risk.  

In other words, the public Roy Cohn and the private Roy Cohn were one and the same, but it is a unique evil for someone who has the resources to help but lies about it out of hypocrisy.  Jews do not believe in hell, but I believe that there is a special place in that fictitious entity for Roy Cohn