Some years ago I marched in a protest along Broadway in New York. We started at Columbus Circle -- a pretty huge crowd -- and walked all the way to lower Manhattan. For the first hour or less, we were joined by then-mayor Ed Koch and, as it happened, he chose me as his marching partner. No introductions, we just talked. He was funny and interesting and completely unofficial... more laughter than anything else.
I'm enraged, as I always am, when someone who (whether you like/agree with him or not) has a distinguished career of one kind or another, but the public zeroes in on his sexuality. What the...?!
Here's one reporter's comment on Ed Koch's death this week at New York Magazine's Daily Intel.
And now Ed Koch is dead.
That he took the secrets of his heart to the grave is, historically speaking, meaningless, despite how much speculation has percolated through his obituaries. Gay or straight, bisexual or asexual, Koch simply was who he was (that is, a man taken to shouting “fuck you” to anybody who wanted details).
More telling is that he died as he lived — an utterly single man, a “lifelong bachelor." Yes, he had a tight inner circle of friends for weekly lunches and daily phone calls. And yes, there was that rumor, never corroborated, of an affair with a City Hall aide who was soon relocated to the southwest. But whatever lurked in his heart, Koch never coupled. ...Daily Intel
Frankly, Daily Intel, fuck you.
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