{"id":1522,"date":"2025-10-31T00:52:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T04:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/?p=1522"},"modified":"2025-10-31T00:52:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T04:52:16","slug":"is-roy-gay-or-a-politician","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/2025\/10\/31\/is-roy-gay-or-a-politician\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Roy Gay or a Politician?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0In the play of <\/span>Angels in America<\/span><\/i>, Roy is a political figure who hates gay people and actively pushes the narrative that they spread AIDs. In some instances, this can be viewed negatively due to the amount of people advocating for gay rights and refusal of gay people spreading AIDs. Tony Kushner does an interesting take with Roy, as they constantly set representations for someone in the political with homophobia.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0During the exchange with Henry and Roy, the process of getting Roy to accept his illness was a never-ending denial, especially for their character. However, the things Roy talks about in Act 1 Scene 9, \u201cNo say it. I mean it. Say: \u2018Roy Cohn, you are a homosexual.\u2019 And I will proceed to destroy your reputation and your practice and your career in New York State, Henry. Which you know I can do\u201d (Kushner 45). Roy uses his power as a political figure to shut down any ideas of Henry claiming that Roy might be gay. In addition, during the AIDs epidemic there might be possibilities of politicians preventing research of curing AIDs as seen in the quote. Roy seems to carry this skewed perception of reality, especially when they go out of their way to deny their disease. In Act 1 Scene 9, Roy says, “AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian. You think these are names that tell you who someone sleeps with, but they don\u2019t tell you that\u201d (Kushner 46). This ties together the issues of AIDs being linked with homosexuality, since it is viewed in a negative light enforcing discrimination and shame on the LGBTQ community by people in power.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Something Roy brings up near the end of their conversation with Henry is that there seems to be men sleeping with him to get good connections like communicating with the President and such. A part of hypocrisy that Roy continues to deny any relation to AIDS and homosexuality and even deconstructing labels. In Act 1 Scene 9, Roy tells Henry,\u201d Not ideology, or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout. Not who I fuck or who fucks me, but who will pick up the phone when I call, who owes me favors. This is what a label refers to\u201d (Kushner 46). This showcases the level of denial Roy has for their sexuality going as far as using it for \u201cclout\u201d and not acknowledging the proper use of labels for LGBTQ folk.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0In the play of Angels in America, Roy is a political figure who hates gay people and actively pushes the narrative that they spread AIDs. In some instances, this can be viewed negatively due to the amount of people advocating for gay rights and refusal of gay people spreading AIDs. Tony Kushner does … Continue reading Is Roy Gay or a Politician?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5708,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344663],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5708"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1522"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1523,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522\/revisions\/1523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}