Barney Frank, First Openly Gay Congressman, Enters Hospice
Amid congestive heart failure, the politician says he regrets the progressive agenda of his party – and that he won’t live long enough to see Trump’s “continued implosion.”
Featured image: Mass. Rep. Barney Frank Announces He Will Not Run For Re-election In 2012 (Photo by Darren McCollester/Getty Images)
Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass), liberal LGBTQ advocate and architect of the Dodd-Frank Act, has entered into hospice amid congestive heart failure. He is also on the cusp of releasing a book in which he reportedly chastises Democrats for having “embraced an agenda that goes beyond what’s politically acceptable.” In an interview on Tuesday with Politico, he said, “Until we separate ourselves from that agenda, we don’t win.”
Frank served in the U.S. House of Representatives from Mass. from 1981 – 2013. He became the first member of Congress to voluntarily come out as gay in 1987 at age 47. He was also the first member of Congress to wed someone of the same-sex. For years, he had been surrounded by suspicions about his sexuality; in time, he came to a conclusion as shared with News Center Maine in 2020:
“I can accept not being volunteering that I am gay, I can accept not being honest in that sense, but I can’t live with hypocrisy and that’s been my principle ever since… “
He also told the outlet in an interview, that he was “troubled by the tendency of many on the left these days to back away from free speech.” (He also expressed a guilty pleasure of “watching how badly Donald Trump is performing,” pointing to lies at a scale never seen, and his “effort to destroy democracy.”)
As Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, he co-authored the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which overhauled regulation of the finance industry in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 financial crisis that left the mortgage industry in collapse. It was a time when bailouts were handed out to firms once deemed “too big to fail.” An accomplishment that he has publicly expressed having pride in.
Regarded as intelligent, witty and somewhat disheveled, Frank’s tenure was not without scandal. Two years before coming out, he hired a male prostitute, Steve Gobie, whom he later employed as an aide, housekeeper and driver. (The sex worker proceeded to use Frank’s house as a brothel.) As a Congressman, he was also sexually involved with an exec from Fannie Mae, the government mortgage behemoth he was charged with regulating.
Frank hopes that his book, slated for release this fall, will “give courage to many of my colleagues who I know agree with me but are inhibited from saying so,” he told Politico. He also shared, “One of my regrets is that I won’t see the continued implosion of Donald Trump.”
For now, the former Massachusetts lawmaker is adjusting to a challenging deadline for completion of his book.
“At 86, I’ve made it longer than I thought,” said Frank, who is receiving home hospice care in Ogunquit, Maine where he lives with his husband. “At some point, my heart’s just going to give out, and it’s reaching that stage. So I’m taking it easy at home and dealing with it by relaxing.”
