Best known as Joseph McCarthy's right-hand man during the Wisconsin senator's witch hunt for suspected Communists, a crusade that also went after gays — though even then Cohn's sexuality was an open secret. Cohn died of AIDS in 1986, though he denied this and claimed to have liver cancer. But the legacy of his professional and personal lives didn't die with him; Tony Kushner made Cohn a main character in his epic play about AIDS, “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.”

Though he was supposed to be one of the nation's chief crime fighters, the legendary FBI director is well known for having abused his power, often doing so in order to target minority groups or to find information for potential blackmail purposes. That was certainly the case when it came to gay people, or those Hoover suspected of being gay: As Salon noted back in 2000, among his many other sins, Hoover spread rumors about Adlai Stevenson’s sexuality in order to derail Stevenson's 1952 presidential campaign, and had surveillance done on women he believed were Eleanor Roosevelt's lovers. There's still debate about Hoover's own sexuality, but even when he was still alive, there were persistent rumors that he was gay. (“That old cocksucker!” then-President Richard Nixon said when he learned of Hoover's death.) Hoover's also now known in the popular imagination as a cross-dresser — that, too, has never been definitively proven, however.

His arrest for soliciting sex in a bathroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport made the words “wide stance” famous. A year later, though, the Idaho Republican was still in the Senate, still co-sponsoring the Federal Marriage Amendment. Though he initially pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the incident in the airport bathroom, Craig ended up fighting to retract the plea – similarly, he went back on what had appeared to be a promise that he'd resign from the Senate. Instead, he served out the remainder of his term, retiring at the beginning of 2009.

In 2006, when his three-year relationship with a male escort was first revealed, Haggard was, in the words of Salon's Lauren Sandler, “the most important evangelical you've never heard of,” perhaps even “the most important evangelical, period.” Until the scandal began, Haggard didn't just head his New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo.; he was also president of the National Association of Evangelicals. And he participated in weekly conference calls with then-President George W. Bush's White House. After his fall, Haggard went into conversion therapy and claimed to emerge from it “completely heterosexual.” Since then, he and his wife have attempted to make their way back into the spotlight and into preaching, but it's been a rocky road.

As a congressman from Maryland in the 1970s, the married Bauman was a rising “New Right” star, a vociferous opponent of gay rights and a member of the Jesse Helms wing of the GOP. He was on course to win a routine reelection bid in 1980 when, weeks before the election, he was charged with soliciting sex from a male teenager. He claimed alcoholism as a defense, denied he was gay, and sniffed at hypocrisy charges: “There are things that are right and wrong. I have done wrong, but those standards have to be upheld. I never made any statements that I don’t stand by now.” He was defeated by Democrat Roy Dyson and later admitted his sexuality and today works with (and blogs for) the Sovereign Society, which promotes offshore banking.

The veteran Republican operative is lucky he lives in Massachusetts. Because of that, he was able to marry his partner of 40 years in 2004. Others who live in states represented by some of the people he's gotten elected – the late Sens. Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond among them, along with others like Federal Marriage Amendment supporter Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah – aren't so fortunate. Finkelstein has been one of the GOP's most influential consultants over the past four decades, but he's still managed to keep a very low profile; he's famously proud that only one photo of him is known to exist.

The Virgina Republican's tenure in the House didn't last long; it was cut short after just two terms when gay activist Mike Rogers outed him. On his Web site, BlogActive.com, Rogers posted audio of what he said was Schrock placing an ad for sex with another man on a phone service set up for just that purpose. Shortly after the audio was made public, Schrock announced his decision not to run for a third term. During his time in Congress, Schrock did have time to co-sponsor the Federal Marriage Amendment and vote for the Marriage Protection Act; Rogers cited these when he outed the congressman.

In 1986, then serving in Washington state's Legislature, West was a co-sponsor of a bill to ban gay men and lesbians from working at schools or daycare centers. That's only one part of his record of opposing gay rights, but it's one tinged with particularly bitter irony, considering that by that time, he'd already allegedly molested at least two young men. Those charges, first publicized in 2005 by the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, were never proven in court – the FBI said it didn't find enough evidence to warrant bringing charges – but the scandal didn't end there. West was also accused of using his position as mayor of Spokane to try to entice men into sex with him. He left office in disgrace after city residents voted overwhelmingly to recall him as mayor, and died of cancer in 2006.

This Mississippi Republican ran far to the right to win election to the House in 1978, but was forced to admit in the summer of 1980 that he'd been arrested several years earlier for committing an “obscene act” near the Iwo Jima Memorial. Then 38, Hinson vehemently denied he was gay, declared himself a happily married Christian man, and won reelection — barely. But months into his next term, he was arrested in a public restroom in the Longworth House Office Building for committing oral sodomy — then a crime — with a male employee of the Library of Congress. Hinson resigned his seat, divorced his wife, and never returned to Mississippi, living out his life (and quietly advocating gay rights) in the D.C. suburbs until his death from AIDS in 1995.