Barney Frank's decades-long House career has come to a close, but the gay firebrand is far from retiring
Interview by Justin Snow Photography by Todd Franson
January 17, 2013
Barney Frank
(Photo by Todd Franson)
MW:Has the atmosphere here changed since you first arrived in Washington?
FRANK: It mostly changed in 2010 when the tea party people won. I understand it’s very poisonous, but if you go back, from 2003 to 2007 I was the ranking minority member of the Financial Services Committee, the chairman was Mike Oxley (R-Ohio), and we worked together. He was in charge, but I had a real influence and it was a civil relationship.
And then I became chairman in 2007 when George Bush was president and we cooperated with the Bush administration. The secretary of the treasury, Hank Paulson, who was there during the financial crisis, asked me to write the foreward to his book about his experiences. We had differences and we argued – partisanship is a good thing – but we could come to a deal. Now, the deal was never 50-50.
Then the Democrats did pretty well when we had Obama as president and the House and the Senate. Things broke down in 2011 after this right-wing group took over the Republican Party and won the House in 2010. Now they’re starting to come apart and I have some optimism that people in the Republican Party are now understanding how much damage they are doing to themselves by having this right-wing group in power.
MW:Many people described this past election as a ”watershed moment” for gay rights because of the marriage wins and President Obama’s re-election.
FRANK: And not just because the president came out for marriage. As early as May, you had liberal political analysts saying, ”Oh, this is going to be a big problem for Obama. It’s going to hurt him in North Carolina.” Instead, Romney was complaining that it became a big political plus for Obama. Yes, it was a watershed year because this issue that everybody has been afraid of turned out to be a big winner for the Democrats.
MW:Do you think the game has changed forever on these issues?
FRANK: Yes. I think we have broken the back of anti-LGBT prejudices. We have to still keep working, but I think within 10 years we’ll have pretty full legal equality; that is, a fully trans-inclusive bill banning employment discrimination. We couldn’t get that done the last time. Next time the Democrats have the House, Senate and the president, we will get that.
I think the Supreme Court will do away with DOMA. But if it doesn’t, again, the next time the Democrats control the presidency, the House and the Senate, we’ll get rid of DOMA. And I don’t see a Supreme Court decision coming yet that says everybody has a right to same-sex marriage, but I believe in well over half the country people will have that right state by state.
MW:A lot of people think the Supreme Court will rule against DOMA, but the Proposition 8 case seems to raise a lot of questions as to whether the right of same-sex couples to marry is protected under the Constitution.
FRANK: I think it was a mistake to have brought the Prop. 8 case. I wish that some of the people out there and [Ted] Olson and [David] Boies paid more attention to Mary Bonauto, the lawyer for [Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders]. She is our Thurgood Marshall. She is a brilliant lawyer, a brilliant political strategist. She’s the one who developed the DOMA cases and the equal-protection argument. And then in California, some people came in and saved us because there’s a Supreme Court precedent against same-sex marriage. What they did was adopt the Colorado precedent, because remember the Prop. 8 decision didn’t say there’s a right constitutionally to same-sex marriage everywhere in America. It said that if a state has once allowed everybody in that state to be married — same sex or opposite sex — and then takes it away only for the same-sex people, that’s illegitimate. It’s what they did in Colorado with regards to antidiscrimination.
My guess is the Supreme Court will affirm the Prop. 8 decision, not go into the broader ”Everybody has the right to marry.” That’ll mean, by the way, in the Ninth Circuit Court people will have a right to same-sex marriage in California, but not in Oregon, Washington or Hawaii. Those both are based on existing Supreme Court doctrine.
MW:For the Republican Party going forward, do you think they have a future if they don’t catch up to some of these issues?
FRANK: Sure they have a future, and particularly because they gerrymandered in 2010 and it’s going to be harder for us to take the House back. On the other hand, one of the things I want to do and I am optimistic about the presidency with young people and Hispanics, but we should be doing better among white men. And that’s one of the things I want to talk about in my book is how to do that.
But I think they have a real crisis. If they do not break the grip of the tea party they will be very much a minority party. In the short term, they have a real problem because breaking that is going to be messy.
I was talking to a Republican senator the other night at the airport when I was waiting for Jim, my husband. I mentioned to him that the House Republicans were now thinking about changing the [fiscal cliff] deal, and he said, ”Boy, I went over a couple weeks ago to talk to the Republicans from my state to try to get them to be more reasonable. They’re fucking nuts. We get the shit pounded out of us for being too much for the rich and they don’t understand that.”
Yeah, they’ll survive. The question is how long will it take them and at what price. But they’ll have minority status for a while.
MW:How long do you think it will take them?
FRANK: They’re getting so pounded and I think what’s happening too is some of their supporters and funders are saying this is crazy. I believe, for example, that when the debt limit comes up that’s a real problem for them because their fundamentalists are saying, ”We won’t allow the debt limit to go up unless they cut Social Security and Medicare,” which is an insane political position, as well as being immoral.
And I think they’re going to have to crack. I think they’re going to have to give in. I think what’s going to happen is there’s going to be a battle from now until the next presidential election between crazy people and mainstream conservatives.
Alexandria City Councilman R. Kirk McPike won Tuesday’s Democratic firehouse primary for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates.
The openly gay McPike, who works as chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), secured 60.5% of the vote in the four-way race among Democrats in the 5th House District.
Eileen Cassidy Rivera, a former Alexandria City School Board member, placed second, finishing ahead of criminal defense attorney Chris Leibig and Gregory Darrall, an openly gay teacher and labor leader.
The fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal agents during a January 24 protest in Minneapolis has drawn sharp condemnation from LGBTQ lawmakers, as scrutiny grows over the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement and the conduct of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse at a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital, was using his phone to record the actions of Customs and Border Patrol and ICE officers who had been deployed to Minneapolis amid protests over a surge of federal agents tasked with arresting and deporting non-citizens.
The year's nearly out. Sometimes that calls for taking sweet stock of the past months' wonderful events. Coming to the end of 2025, on the other hand, is more like getting to that denouement in the action movie where the survivors take a breath and pat each other on the back for having made it out alive. At this stage, we are Newt getting tucked-in to her Sulaco hibernation tube.
With some effort and a pinch of luck, may we all fare better in 2026 than poor Newt's end at the start of Alien 3.
Why such a shitty year? So much of it, obviously, can be laid at the feet of Lame Duck Donald. Not that he hasn't had loads of assistance in his evil efforts to erase our transgender family and friends, colleagues, and leaders during 2025. The purge, as promised, began right out of the gate on Inauguration Day.
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