Famously outspoken, Ed Koch was never at a loss for words — except when it came to his personal life.
Long rumored to be gay, Koch insisted his sex life was nobody’s business and for decades shut down prying queries with a withering “F–k off.”
“Whether I am straight or gay or bisexual is nobody’s business but my own,” the colorful three-term mayor wrote in his 1992 biography, “Citizen Koch.”
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He was a lifelong bachelor who lived in the West Village, and his sexual orientation became a hot topic in his vicious 1977 mayoral primary battle against Mario Cuomo.
During the race, posters sprang up around New York, declaring, “Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo.”
Lashing out at the dirty tactics, Koch denied being gay. “I am not a homosexual,” he said at the time. “If I were a homosexual, I would hope I would have the courage to say so.
“What’s cruel is that you are forcing me to say I am not a homosexual. This means you are putting homosexuals down. I don’t want to do that.”
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During his run, Koch squired feisty former beauty queen and Consumer Affairs Commissioner Bess Myerson around New York. Their public appearances and hand-holding fueled speculation that she’d been asked to be his “beard.”
“I am outraged by the charge in the campaign that I was Ed’s coverup — there just to dispel the rumors that Ed was gay,” the furious Myerson told New York magazine that year. “Ed is not gay.”
But the question continued to dog Koch throughout his 1978-89 reign, when the AIDS epidemic swept New York.
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In 1984, he became the first mayor to march in New York’s Gay Pride Parade. A year earlier, he had created the city’s Office of Gay and Lesbian Health Concerns.
He was the first mayor to appoint openly gay judges and staff. As a congressman in the 1970s, he introduced anti-discrimination bills.
Still, the gay community lambasted him, claiming he was in the closet. Activist and playwright Larry Kramer, who harshly criticized Koch as too slow to respond to the AIDS crisis, satirized him as closeted in Broadway’s “The Normal Heart.”
In 2009, Koch was outed in filmmaker Kirby Dick’s “Outrage,” which claimed the colorful Koch had a boyfriend, Richard Nathan, who was sent packing from the city when Koch became mayor.
Koch denied he and Nathan were lovers and furiously derided Kirby for claiming the mayor had done nothing for gay rights or AIDS.
“It’s a f–king outrage,” Koch fumed to The Post’s Page Six, running down a laundry list of his work on behalf of the gay and lesbian community.
“There’s no question that some New Yorkers think I’m gay and voted for me nonetheless,” Koch once said. “The vast majority don’t care, and others don’t think I am. And I don’t give a s–t either way. I find it fascinating that people are interested in my sex life.”
“. . . My answer to this question on the subject is, simply, “F–k off.’ ”