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Barney Frank (1940 -)
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 Improper
Bostonians : Lesbian and Gay History from the Puritans to Playland
by Barney Frank (Introduction), the History Project
(Compiler)
Since the 17th century,
Boston has played a vital role in the history of the United States
as a center of society and intellectual ferment. So it's not
surprising that the city also has a deeply rooted gay and lesbian
culture. Improper Bostonians is a lavishly illustrated,
astutely researched look at the role that homosexuals have played
in constructing Boston society. From the private homoerotic
letters of John Winthrop (the first Governor of Massachusetts) to
the 19th-century concept of the "Boston Marriage"--the
widely-used term for two unmarried women living together as
partners--to the open and brash gay and lesbian life that existed
in Boston's notorious Scully Square in the 1920s and 1930s, Improper
Bostonians deftly shows how gay men and lesbians were always
present in the social, political, and intellectual life of the
city.
But as smart as its text is, the best feature of
the book is its stunning array of engravings, paintings, news
clippings, and photographs (many from personal collections)
illustrating the book's themes. Looking over the portraits of
politicians, poets (including Katherine Lee Bates, author of
"America the Beautiful"), and performers one is reminded
that gay and lesbian history is really not a separate category,
but a single aspect of our collective history. --Michael
Bronski
 Positively
Gay : New Approaches to Gay and Lesbian Life by Betty
Berzon (Editor), Barney Frank
The original edition of this book sold 35,000
copies, and was widely praised for its practical treatment of
diverse topics affecting gay and lesbian life. This fully revised
and updated edition includes an all-new section on AIDS,
highlighting how the gay and lesbian community has banded together
to fight this disease and offering coping and survival strategies
for those infected or at risk. Other chapters cover such
important, but often overlooked, topics as: --building successful
same-sex partnerships --reconciling religious dilemmas --coming
out to ones family --the special experience of gay people of color
--legal issues, discrimination, and voting power.
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Excerpt:
Barney Frank has represented the Fourth
Congressional District of Massachusetts since he was elected to
the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980.
Congressman Frank graduated in 1962 from Harvard
College. Subsequent to graduation he taught undergraduates at
Harvard while studying for a Ph.D. In 1968, before completing his
Ph.D. degree, Congressman Frank left graduate school to become the
Chief Assistant to Mayor Kevin White of Boston, a position he held
for three years.
In 1971 Congressman Frank spent six months as a
fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School.
He then served for one year as Administrative Assistant to U.S.
Congressman Michael J. Harrington.
In 1972 Congressman Frank was elected to the
Massachusetts Legislature, where he served for eight years. During
that time, he entered Harvard Law School in September, 1974 and
graduated in 1977. In 1979 he became a member of the Massachusetts
Bar.
While in state and local government, Congressman
Frank taught part-time at the University of Massachusetts-Boston,
the John F. Kennedy School at Harvard and Boston University.
He has published numerous articles on politics
and public affairs, and in 1992 he published Speaking Frankly, an
essay on the role the Democratic Party should play in the 1990s.
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Here you can find press releases on
breaking news, opinion editorials, highly requested floor
speeches, and issue statements on legislative matters.
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This information is hosted by the
American Civil Liberties Union.
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Excerpt:
I have asked Member after Member who is an
advocate of this bill, how does the fact that two men live
together in a loving relationship and commit themselves in Hawaii
threaten your marriage in Florida or Georgia or wherever? And the
answer is always, well, it does not threaten my marriage, it
threatens the institution of marriage. That, of course, baffles me
some. Institutions do not marry. They may merge, but they do not
marry. People marry, human beings. Men and women who love each
other marry. And no one who understands human nature thinks that
allowing two other people who love each other interferes....
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Excerpt:
Members have said `Well, people are here looking
for their approval.' Herb and I have been together for 8 years. I
want to assure those who have spoken in favor of this, we do not
seek your approval. It is of no consequence to us whatsoever.
What we seek is to protect ourselves, and, even more, people more
vulnerable than us, from the bigotry and interference that would
harass them, belittle them, and deny them basic rights. And you
say `Well, you have got to do this. It is not meanness, it is not
bigotry. You have got to do it, because it would undermine the
family.'
That is bizarre. Is your faith in the family of such fragility
that you think people are going to learn that Herb and I live
together, that Dean and Gary live together, and they are going to
leave their wives?
I have said this before. There was a commercial
before about V-8 Juice, and there would be this cartoon character.
And he would drink an apple juice, and he would drink a tomato
juice, and he would drink a carrot juice. And someone would give
him a V-8, and he would say, `I could have had a V-8.'
What are we, gay men, the V-8 of American society? Are you so
frightened that people will see two men living together in a
loving relationship, or two women living together in a loving
relationship, and that will undermine the family? Shame on those.
You are the ones who undermine the family when you trivialize it
like this...
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Excerpt:
I am struck by this debate about promoting
homosexuality. I have to tell the Members, and I think I have had
as much experience about it as almost anybody in here, if you paid
me to promote homosexuality, I do not know what I would do. How do
you promote homosexuality? What do people think it is, a rock
concert? A prize fight? How do you promote homosexuality? What
shallowness of understanding of basic human nature leads Members
to talk about promoting homosexuality, encouraging homosexuality?
What do they think it is, a taste for food?
In fact, people in New York and in Los Angeles and in other
schools who understand human nature and understand human sexuality
know that there are 15- and 16- and 17- and 18-year-old children
who are tortured by feelings they cannot control in a society that
condemns them. They have reached out to those children. They have
established schools that say to those kids, `You are not
worthless,' that would not subject those children to the kind of
treatment that one of the Members sought to subject another Member
to on the floor. That is the kind of insensitivity and bullying
that exists. We know that.
Yes, I suppose if we have a 16- or a 17-year-old whose feelings
are homosexual and cannot turn them off, like a water faucet,
despite the shallowness of the understanding that some people in
here have of human nature, if we take that kid who has been abused
and who has been picked on and put him in a more supportive
environment, then we lose our money. How do we dare support that
kid? How dare we tall her she is not worthless? How dare we try to
say that the person should not be discouraged from going on with
their life? That is what we are talking about...
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By Barney Frank, The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review
AT every level of government, and in every
region of the country, the Democrats are significantly better than
the Republicans on the issue of defeating homophobia and
protecting us against unfair discrimination. Why, then, the
ambivalence on the part of gay men and lesbians about following
the advice of Samuel Gompers, who in the early days of the labor
movement in America announced the political principle that he said
should govern those seeking to use the political process to
advance important goals"reward your friends and punish your
enemies"? For gays and lesbians in the current American
political climate, this means strongly supporting Democrats nearly
all the time...
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From GayGate.com
Excerpt:
In May, 1987, a reporter from The Boston Globe
posed the question Barney Frank had been privately preparing for
four years. His answer: "If you ask the direct question: 'Are
you gay?' the answer is yes. So what? I've said all along that if
I was asked by a reporter and I didn't respond it would look like
I had something to hide and I don't think I have anything to
hide.... I don't think my sex life is relevant to my job, but on
the other hand I don't want to leave the impression that I'm
embarrassed about my life." The admission made Frank only the
second openly gay member of the House of Representatives in its
history, and the first to come out willingly...
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Names Index:
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