Barney Frank, the liberal icon and gay-rights pioneer who represented Massachusetts' Fourth Congressional District for more than three decades and was known for his intellect and acerbic wit, died Tuesday night at his home in Ogunquit, Maine. A close friend confirmed his death to GBH News.
He was 86 years old and had been receiving hospice care for congestive heart failure.
Even in hospice, Frank had remained politically engaged, actively working to spread the message of his forthcoming book from Yale University Press, "The Hard Path to Unity: Why We Must Reform the Left to Rescue Democracy."
In the book, which will be released in September, Frank argues that too many on the "militant left" have taken intransigent stands on a range of issues that are out of step with the general electorate.
"I don't mind people advocating advanced positions — I filed a bill to legalize marijuana in [the early 1970s]," Frank told GBH News in a recent interview. "What I object to is when this ideologically committed group takes the things that they are most committed to, that are the most controversial, and make[s] them litmus tests and then cause[s] problems for everybody else."
He will perhaps be best remembered as the first member of Congress to voluntarily publicly come out as gay, which he did in 1987.
Recently asked by GBH News if he wished he could do over any part of his career, Frank replied: "I would have come out earlier."
Raised in a liberal, blue-collar Jewish household in Bayonne, New Jersey — his father owned a truck stop and his mother was trained as a legal secretary — Barney Frank moved to Massachusetts to attend Harvard College. He later pursued graduate studies in the university's government department and became director of student affairs at the Institute of Politics at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
Later, he was recruited to join the campaign of then-Boston mayoral candidate Kevin White. Frank accepted largely because he abhorred the segregationist stance of White's opponent, Louise Day Hicks. After White won, Frank served as his chief of staff.
"He was driven by injustice," said James Segel, a close friend and trusted political advisor. Before his political career took off, Segel noted, Frank had traveled south for the so-called Mississippi Freedom Summer, in which activists worked to enroll as many Black voters as possible.
In 1972, Frank returned to Massachusetts from Washington, D.C., where he had been working for U.S. Rep. Michael Harrington, and ran for a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He won and served for eight years, where he served alongside Segel.
In his memoir, "Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage," Frank described dealing with guilt over his still-closeted status by becoming "the state's most ardent advocate of gay rights."
By 1980, Frank was planning to come out of the closet and leave electoral politics for a career in gay-rights activism. But then he learned that Father Robert Drinan, a liberal priest who represented Massachusetts' Fourth Congressional District, would not seek reelection because Pope John Paul II had ordered priests to refrain from political activity.
Instead of coming out and leaving politics, Frank opted to run for Drinan's seat. He defeated the conservative Republican Richard Jones in the general election by four percentage points. It was the narrowest victory of his lengthy congressional career.
In Congress, Frank quickly gained a reputation for rhetorical skill that mixed humor with serious, sometimes barbed commentary. Speaking of Ronald Reagan's simultaneous opposition to abortion and desire to cut funds for pregnant women and poor children, Frank said that Reagan "apparently believes that from the standpoint of the federal government, life begins at conception and ends at birth."
This approach, which was a hallmark of Frank's three-plus decades in Congress, was largely strategic: As Frank put it in his autobiography, "The force of an argument is greatly magnified when it can be phrased as a quip, especially a snarky one that is easily remembered."
During his tenure in Congress, Frank worked on a multitude of issues, including protecting affordable rental housing, defending affirmative action, securing funding to fight the AIDS crisis, and amending restrictions that barred gay men and lesbians from abroad from living in or even traveling to the United States. He also successfully fought to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the law that banned LGBTQ individuals from serving openly in the U.S. military.
Frank was also intensely focused on financial regulation. In 2007, he became chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. In that role, he helped craft the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, commonly referred to as Dodd-Frank, a sprawling piece of legislation designed to rein in the financial industry and protect consumers in the wake of the devastating 2008 financial crisis.
Frank publicly came out in 1987 in an interview with the Boston Globe. He received what he described as an overwhelmingly positive response from constituents, the media and fellow politicians. In 2012, he was the first congressperson to marry a member of the same sex when he wedded his partner, James Ready.
Frank also weathered public scandal around his sexuality. In 1985, when he was still closeted, he hired a male prostitute, Steve Gobie. Over time, Frank said they became "more friends than sexual partners," though Frank hired Gobie as an aide and he lived in Frank's home until Frank kicked him out in 1987, after after learning that Gobie had been soliciting clients there. In 1990, Frank was formally reprimanded by the House for getting parking tickets amassed by Gobie canceled and for lying, in a letter he wrote to Gobie's probation officer, about how the two met.
"That was a very hard period for him," Segel, Frank's friend and advisor, recalled. "He had gotten everything he wanted professionally, and then almost lost it all."
After more than three decades in Congress, Frank chose not to seek reelection and retired in early 2013. He made that choice in large part because Massachusetts' congressional maps had been redrawn in a way that would have forced him to woo hundreds of thousands of new voters in order to keep his job.
"I think I would have won," Frank said when he announced his retirement. "But it would have been a tough campaign."
In an interview with the Washington Post around the time of his retirement, Frank said he couldn't have won his 1980 campaign for Congress if he had not remained closeted. He also said he had subsequently offered counsel to other lawmakers who were weighing coming out. His advice: "Do it if you're at that stage, because your ability to live as an integrated human personality is more important than anything."
Asked by GBH News about his role as a gay-rights trailblazer, Frank drew an analogy between him and his husband, who is an avid surfer.
"If there are waves, he's very good at taking advantage of them," Frank said. "That's how I feel about gay rights. I came along in American history when people were ready to deal with that.
"I took office at the most propitious time to get fully involved in gay rights," Frank said. "When I took office, there were no protections at the federal level [for] people because of their sexual orientation, and there were a couple of prohibitions. You couldn't join the Army, couldn't get a security clearance. And by the time we were through, those had all been reversed."
Frank balked, however, at identifying the aspects of his legacy of which he was proudest.
"The thing I'm proudest of is that I have learned through experience with the media and elsewhere not to answer that question," Frank said. "So if the stuff I've done doesn't speak for itself, then too bad."
This is a developing story.
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