McKinney died at
Washington Hospital Center on May 7, 1987, at the age of 56, from AIDS-related complications. His physician speculated that McKinney became infected with HIV in 1979 as the result of blood transfusions during heart surgery. He was diagnosed with AIDS on April 22, 1987, during his final hospitalization. McKinney was known by friends to be bisexual, though his family said this was not the case, which raised the issue of how he had contracted the disease. Anti-gay prejudice at the time of McKinney's death in 1987 may have promoted a disingenuous approach to speculations on the cause of McKinney's HIV infection. Arnold Denson, the man with whom McKinney had been living in Washington, and to whom McKinney left property in his will, said that he had been McKinney's lover, and that he believed McKinney was already infected when Denson met him five years prior. In 1987,
Barney Frank became the first U.S. congressman to come out as gay of his own volition, and was inspired to do so in part by the death of McKinney; Frank told
The Washington Post that after McKinney's death there was, "An unfortunate debate about 'Was he or wasn't he? Didn't he or did he?' I said to myself, I don't want that to happen to me." Additionally, in 1988, Connecticut's legislature honored McKinney's legacy by naming the
Stamford Transportation Center after him. ==Family==