Pioneering Gay Former Congressman Barney Frank Enters Hospice, Tells Progressives Not To Move Too Far Left

Former Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank has entered in-home hospice care due to congestive heart failure. Frank was the first member of Congress to voluntarily come out as gay and the first congressman to enter a same-sex marriage while serving in office.

The longtime representative served from 1981 to 2013 and for some time was the most high profile openly gay man in the federal government.

Frank, who now lives in coastal southern Maine, told Politico in an interview that he feels “very good — no pain, no discomfort,” but that, “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.”

Frank coming out in 1987 was a landmark moment at the time. He said he found Americans were less homophobic than they were racist.

“When I decided, finally, to come out in ’87, it just struck me when I did that … the American people are a lot less homophobic than they thought they were supposed to be,” he said. “More racist, unfortunately, but less homophobic.”

Aside from being a trailblazer as an LGBT federal lawmaker, Frank’s contribution to financial policy led to a sweeping 2010 rewrite of Wall Street oversight known as the Dodd-Frank Act which put new scrutiny on U.S. banks following the 2008 mortgage crisis. Frank said he is very proud of the Act.

Frank, for years viewed as one of the nation’s chief liberal voices, said he now believes the Progressive Left may be going too far in its policy pursuits, and risks politically alienating the voters it needs to help Democrats win elections.

Frank is set to release a new book later this year–the sixth either written by him or about him–and hopes to use his profile to make it easier for establishment Democrats to speak up about controversial positions on the Left.

“For a lot of my colleagues, the argument has been, ‘well, we don’t support defund the police or open borders, and we don’t say we do,’” Frank said. “But my point is, no, it’s not enough … to be silent. We have to explicitly repudiate it.”

Frank was careful to point out that he is “not arguing that anybody should stop his or her advocacy.”

“But it’s one thing to advocate something knowing that you’re going beyond the current viewpoints, and another to make it a litmus test,” he said.

Frank also shared he believes Republicans and President Trump are headed for defeat in the midterm elections.