Beyond PoliticsTaunton, MASeason 1 Episode 2GUEST: Barney Frank, US Congressman (D-MA, 4th District)
STAN POTTINGER: You’re Harvard educated, you’re Jewish, you’re gay, you’re a liberal and you’re a Democrat. Are there any stereotypes you’d like to clear up for us? CONGRESSMAN BARNEY FRANK: Well, I have been accused of not dressing to the expectation people have of uh... of gay people. Or actually, I- I think that’s kind of unfair. I start out uh... most of the time dressed well but it co-- I- I have this-- I guess, it’s not just clothes. I have had a kind of life-long battle with things, with inanimate objects. I mean, things break and they get lost and I just don’t do well with- with uh... things you can’t reason with and that includes clothes. I mean I-- they started out-- I remember I-- When I first was running for Congress 26 years ago and uhm... people said “Well, you know, you’re gonna look more congressional,” or whatever the hell that was. So, uhm... I went shopping and uhm... a newspaper then said I was wearing an ill-fitting suit and I was asked about that and I said actually that it was- it was not an ill-fitting suit; it was a very well-fitting suit, I just wasn’t the person it fit. I mean, it just-- It’s not-- I just-- It’s a nice suit and I think I’m a nice person but we just didn’t-- we didn’t meld. POTTINGER:You have a sister who also has a political career. Is there something in the family DNA that makes you public servants? FRANK:We just grew up in this intensely political household here. I think actually it’s more sort of stereotype you’re enforcing it with, a liberal, Jewish, middle-class, Democratic household. Uh... POTTINGER: Dinner table politics-- FRANK: Absolutely. Lot of conversations, we were fighting over the newspaper. By the early-‘50s, television was beginning to be the kind of really wonderful resource it could be for politics and I-- among my earliest memories of the Kefauver Hearings, I was only like 10 or 11 when those were happening, but I knew enough to know what organized crime was and this kind of spectacle. And I remember one of the most fascinating pieces of television-- It’s interesting. Back then, the society hadn’t decided yet what your rights were to not be televised and uhm... Frank Costello, who was the uh... capo di tutti capi, the boss of all the bosses, was uh... summoned and he said “I didn’t want to be televised,” and it wasn’t created that they could force it to be so the compromise was, you know, people sort of make these things up as they go on, that they wouldn’t show his face. So, as he testified, you saw his hands and it was really kind of quite eloquent. There would be the, you know, the- the clenched fist and the-- and it was just a fascinating kind of thing to watch this man’s hands. And then uh... came the Army of McCarthy hearings when I was in high school and those kind of reinforced my view so I obviously always had the interested but uhm... And then there was one particularly-- We were very much into civil rights. I think here again, stereotypes. Uh... You know, I-- Uh... People, the thing about clichés and stereotypes particularly is, uhm... it’s not that they’re not generally true because if they weren’t generally true, uh... they wouldn’t get to be stereotypes and clichés. The problem is when people apply them too unsparingly and uh... as- as Jews particularly, then, sort of middle-class Jews in the New York area, we were very much into social justice and I think understandably, uh... Jews have this kind of horror of discrimination since we have often been the victims of it. So I do remember early on, being very interested in the Emmett Till murder, Emmett Till who was the Chicago teenager who was murdered in Mississippi ‘cause uh... he was exactly my age and I read in the papers this black kid goes to Mississippi and seems to have whistled at a white woman and is subsequently murdered. And not only he’s murdered, but the law enforcement officials probably were in on the murders, certainly didn’t lift a finger or anything to deter it. And I remember at that point saying boy, uh... how can that be? This is America? This is not supposed to happen. And that kind of reinforced uh... our commitment. I remember, you know, my parents and my sister and I, we were all feeling very strongly about that. POTTINGER: In 1996, you said your religion, your sexual orientation and being left handed have prevented you from feeling like a member of a majority. How did those minority characteristics shape your political views and philosophy? FRANK: Well one is I think you do become distrustful of orthodoxy. Uhm... You just don’t want anybody imposing a set of views, you know. In principle, you ought to be objecting to anybody having a set of views imposed on him or her. But if you’re pretty sure that they’re not gonna be your views, then you- you come to that more easily. I remember talking to a very good friend who’s a- a very religious uh... Orthodox Jew uh... very much uh... in- in the very deeply Orthodox tradition and he was expressing his ambivalence about the notion of school prayer, pointing out that in his tradition obviously, prayer was very important and inculcating that in children was important. But, as I said to him, probably understand your view on this but, as you know, if we had school prayer in uh... in uh... the public schools, it ain’t gonna be mishmah, and uh... he said yeah, I know that and that’s basically why I’m not for it. But I-- So obviously, you ought to be against it in principle but self interest never hurts because you know you disagree with received opinion. I mean, when I’m 14, 15 years old, I-- obviously I knew I was Jewish uh... very early and I remember the day when I was 13 when I realized that I was gay, although it wasn’t the word that we used then. And uh... you know, from- from then on, I realized that uh... I just had a different set of views than the prevailing views uhm... as to what was sexually stimulating, as to what was physically attractive, as to what was fun to do uh... and so you kind of get uh... put on your own. And being left handed, I mean, I did say it is kind of a joke uh... but uhm... it is a right-handed world and again, what you learn is that some people can take things for granted, you can’t take things for granted. You gotta figure out how to deal with it so I do think being in that kind of triple minority status sort of reinforced my sense that uh... don’t take anything just because other people say it, uhm... you know, just because well, everybody does it. Well, uhm... there are lot of things that almost everybody was doing that I had no interest in doing and so I had to figure out what to do on my own. POTTINGER: Tell me about when you understood you were different, sexual orientation. FRANK: I was-- Uh... It’s very important because you have this really quite preposterous notion from uh... some people that uhm... you- your sexual orientation is choice, although oddly, it is apparently a choice that only gay and lesbian people are believed to make, that is I-- Uh... There are heterosexuals who say "“Oh, I know you decided to be a lesbian,"” but uh... you ask in return well, when did you decide to be a heterosexual and the- the (inaudible) ridiculous. I mean, nobody ever decides and says oh, I think I’ll go uh... and- and enjoy uh... having sex with uh... women, etc. And uhm... so I say that because I do remember early on, uh... puberty came, my friends began to be interested in pornographic pictures and long before the Internet, (inaudible) like a 12-year-old’s, uh... 12-year-old boys liked to look at pictures of- of naked girls. I remember first thing, well I must be missing some kind of uh... part of my physical makeup because my friends were getting physically attracted here and I don’t see it. And so I literally had first thought well maybe I’m just lacking a sex drive and then I began to realize no, I-- these feelings I’'ve had towards other boys, those are sexual feelings. And I remember one day, something happened, there was something I said that was unguarded, it may even have been physical reaction, and one of my friends said in what was then of course a very cutting remark “"Oh, you’'re queer, you’'re queer",” and he meant it as a kind of a put down joke but it suddenly hit me on head that yeah, that’s true. And I say that ‘'cause I remember it was one of the most depressing days of my life. Uh... Here you are, 13 years old and you suddenly realize, this is 1953, that you are a member of a pretty widely-hated minority and I gotta say for those who think this is some kind of a choice, the notion that a teenager of all people, I mean, teenagers are- are so driven to conform with their peers and are so reluctant for good reasons to deviate from the norm because you get punished for it in so many ways. The notion that you would have chosen that is just as bizarre a stupidity as I have ever encountered and uh... people who use that as a kind of a justification for prejudice-- Although-- Then, on the side, you may say well, if- if I thought you couldn’t help it, then I wouldn’t mind. Uhm... But that’s also kind of a fence around me. If- if you shouldn’t be prejudice, the fact that somebody chose it or didn’t choose it should be irrelevant. People say well, you- you shouldn’t be prejudiced against people uh... if they couldn’t help it but if they can make a choice, you can be prejudice. Well religion is a choice and we don’t think it’s legitimate to be prejudice against people based on their religion. But any case, uhm... I- I remember being terrified and I- I must say that time I said well, okay, I’ll just never tell anybody. And in fact, you know, to go back to the sort of dual minority thing, I was interested in politics by then but as I got into my teenage years and get into high school and then into college, I figured I would wind up professionally as an academic uh... teaching about politics because I figured that because of my status, I could never run for office. And I have to say, and this is indicative I think of where we were in the ‘50s, and of the extent to which we’ve made progress in these things, I figured the main reason I couldn’t run for office was that I was Jewish. I mean, I was gay and obviously that in some ways was a-- not in some ways, it was a greater handicap but I planned never to tell anybody I was gay. I mean, it- it was too late to sort of stay in the Jewish ‘cause I’d come out with a Bar Mitzvah. So, you know, uh... I’'d come out of the arc (inaudible) to be the-- will be the phrase. The main reason I finally came out public, I was by that time 47, I’d been elected to Congress three times, was that uh... it was making me crazy to try and live a- a divided live. Here’s the deal. I- I’d kept it quiet for a very long time and I made this mistake and I’ve heard other people say this. Well, uhm... I’m gay, I’m lesbian. I wanna have a career. I’m gonna pay too high a price so I will suppress my sexuality and I will instead put all my energies into my career. Now that’s a choice, an extraordinarily stupid one, that few people make today, I believe, but it was more common 20 and 30 years ago. For one thing, there are more and more professions where you can literally survive and maybe prosper if you were honest about who you are, uhm... and it is a case of sort of being honest, well, one side is that-- and I- I acknowledge when we were gay or lesbian, discuss our sexuality, as it’s considered still a significant thing that’s called coming out and- and the only thing I like to point out to people is that the way to do that is that it- it is not that we discuss our sexuality that distinguishes us from straight people. It is that it is considered a kind of a big deal when we do because while it is true when we discuss our sexuality as something called coming out, it is also the case that s- straight people regularly discuss their sexuality and insist that when they do it, it’s called talking and it’s not given nearly as much significance as- as when we do it. Okay, I was gonna lead a kind of divided life. Again, sort of be, you know, Lincoln-Schminkin. I was gonna be half slave and half free. I was gonna be publicly sort of neutral and privately, lead the life of a gay man when I got to Congress. And it doesn’t work. You know, there’s enough furveil [ph?] in trying to reach a committed emotional way to give another human being uh... without complicating it by well, are you too out, am I too out? Can I be seen with you, can you be seen with me? Can we go here? And- and my attempt to build a satisfying emotional personal life was just so unsatisfactory and leading me to do dumb things uh... that I said no, I just can’t live this way anymore. And I came out uh... You know, I came out frankly so, I mean, it-- I- I believe it did have a useful impact. I was just thumbing the prejudice and- and there’s a lot to be said for that. But I- I think I probably, to be honest, mostly came out ‘cause I wanted to be able to meet guys in a healthier way. POTTINGER: Where is the gay rights movement on that? Are we in the ‘40s, the ‘50s, the ‘60s? FRANK: It’s a very good question. Actually, I think we are uhm... back to where Jews were maybe even in the ‘20s and ‘30s. Remember, before Hitler really discredited the notion that sort of a polite anti-Semitism was fairly well accepted in America. I think uh... where gay people are today is, in some ways, where Jews were maybe 70 or 80 years ago. Uhm... Currently we have, I think, put an end to anti-Semitism. With race, it’s a different situation and a perplexing one. I think as a result of millions of us being honest about our sexuality, there’s been a diminution in the prejudice America. I think the average-- I think as a result of so many of us coming out as we call it, the average American now understands that he’s really not homophobic as he thought he was supposed to be. There’s more and more people have found people. So I think there is- there is less homophobia in this society than we thought. Unfortunately, I also think people are more racist than they really would think, so that while legally, the situation for blacks is far superior to that uh... of gay people. Blacks are protected constitutionally and statutorily at the national level in a way that gay people are generally not. Uh... Nonetheless, in social attitudes, I uh... I am afraid we are making more progress than fighting homophobia than racism. I say I’m afraid because I think racism, from the moment this country was cursed with slavery and racism has been the single gravest social problem in American and I- I wish we were doing better. It’s not a competition by the way. I think it is mutually reinforcing and in fact, while there is some tension say, with the black community in some ways about marriage or some of the __________________________, the demographic group in the United States House of Representatives that is most supportive of gay and lesbian rights, I believe, is the Congressional Black Caucus. In fact, the Congressional Black Caucus (inaudible) Black Caucus has an even better record on gay rights than the gay members of Congress. Not in the openly gay members of Congress, but if you took all of the gay members of Congress, then the- the blacks do better. But I- I think the answer is that socially, we’ve made more progress in homophobia legally on race and I- I wish we could catch up in both. POTTINGER: What’s the biggest strength of the Democratic Party today even though it’s in a minority position? FRANK: It is our identification I think with fairness in the economy. We have an- an unusual degree of inequality in the economy today because of globalization and technological change. We’ve got a situation now where growth to a lot of Americans, 80 and 90% of Americans seems almost irrelevant to their wellbeing. That’s bad for the country as well as being unfair and I think the Democrats are-- we are identified with raising the minimum wage and supporting the right of unions and keeping Social Security public instead of private. And I think the people understand now that- that we have gone much too far in this private sector-only direction and that while the private sector remains central to our economy, you need some balance and I think the Democrats are best positioned towards that. The other thing that’s the best thing about the Democrats and I wish you weren’t, it is a total __________________________ this administrations made of the war in Iraq. Now I voted against the war but even if you were for it, uh... you have to acknowledge that it is about the most incompetently handled major national security policy in American history. POTTINGER: What do you do as a Democrat when so many people in the country including the press say you’re really soft on Al Qaeda and the Republicans are better to handle our security? FRANK: Well, they did feel that. I think that was frustrating to me because Al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan and I voted along with all but one other Democrat out of 300 or 250 to go after Al Qaeda and to make war in Afghanistan. Uh... That’s one distortion that Carl Rove got away with blatantly, that we didn’t want to fight back. Of course we did but we wanted to fight Al Qaeda where it was, not where it wasn’t. POTTINGER: Let’s talk politics for a minute. You said once that you really don’t like to waste words and that politicians ought to use the same words that other people use. Give me some examples of where political speak bothers you and how do we get rid of that. FRANK: Oh, I do this a lot. The other day, uh... (inaudible) I don’t disagree with you. Now, I- I wonder if a normal person every says I don’t disagree with you. I mean, uh... In the first place, I don’t disagree with you almost always means well, I really don’t agree with you but I can’t figure out a way to justify that. This- this I don’t dislike your shoes? I mean, what is- what is that, you know? I- I uhm... POTTINGER: Can you make a dent in that in Washington? FRANK: Well, I hope so. What you can do is set an example and I- I understand. I think my colleagues tend to underestimate people’s preference for being talked to sensibly. POTTINGER: Sometimes politicians really can’t be honest. You’ve managed to do this a lot. FRANK: Couple of things. Uhm... First of all, you’ve gotta prepare people for it. You can’t- you- you can’t just sort of dart in and dart out. I think-- Look, people don’t like you to disagree with them but they will accept it if they think you were honest about it and it’s part of a broader uhm... and it’s part of- of a behavioral pattern of honesty. So I think in some ways you have to earn that right and I would put it this way like, you know. You running for office and it sounds like a first date, you know. You try to make a good impression, ingratiate yourself with people in real terms and then they will be-- they’ll be more reasonably accept that. Uhm... The other is uhm... try not to be silly. But I think the general point is uh... be genuine and it takes awhile. And you can’t expect, again, like anything else. If the first thing you know about something is something with which you disagree or something you dislike, that’s-- you’re not gonna get off to a good-- you’re not gonna build a relationship. After you’ve built the relationship, then you can do that. Uh... Accept the fact that people can disagree with you honestly, and that also helps. I mean, you- you express disagreement with people, give them the credit to believe in the _____________________ and, you know, and I get people who write to me and say oh, they disagree with this and that and you- you’re being a coward. And I write back why do you talk like that? I mean, can’t we have an honest disagreement? I mean, what-- And so I think that’s part of it, is that people too often uh... dress up disagreements with- with sort of abusive language and if you are honest and respectful towards other people, then we’re willing to accept that. POTTINGER: Why isn’t there more of that in Congress now? There seems to be less collegiality than there’s ever been. FRANK: Uh... Newt Gingrich. And Newt Gingrich consciously set out to say that. He came to the view, and he’s been explicit about this, in the uh... ‘80s that the Republicans were never gonna take power based on issues alone, that as long as the differences between the parties were seen as legitimate differences between people of goodwill or among people of goodwill, that you wouldn’t get this change, that incumbency gave the Democrats advantage. And he felt you had to de-legitimize the Democrats and he said don’t say that they’re wrong. Say that they are corrupt. Say that they are immoral. Say that they are vicious. Say that they are traitors. And he literally put out the words to use. And he succeeded. I think he succeeded because at a particular moment in time, there were some resentments in the society that he was able to hook on to. He certainly wasn’t very successfully once he became Speaker and being constructive, but he- he hooked into that negative. And it succeeded and so that then-- The Republicans said “Well, that’s how we won so let’s keep this up.” Democrats said “Well, that’s how they won. Maybe we should do that also.” Democrats got mad. You also encouraged, and this has been a part of this-- What you have now in the Republican Party is the dominance. It may be eroding but I don’t see it yet over the last 15 years or so of people who uh... use their religiosity as a weapon against other people and they were convinced that there aren’t just honest disagreements between decent people, that there were the decent people and the indecent people. And uh... that generates a reactions. So this-- But it’s basically a result of this conscious strategy. POTTINGER: I know a few Democrats who used the word Nazi. It’s a pretty rough word. FRANK: It is. In fact, I would say I dare all those people don’t compare anybody to Hitler. Maybe you get away with comparing Mussolini to Hitler but even Mussolini wasn’t Hitler. And then don’t accuse people of being Nazis. One, it is offensive to the victims of it, who were primarily Jews, although not exclusively. Two, it’s just wrong and it’s excessive. In fact, I tell people don’t call people fascist. Uh... You know, I-- This-- A very conservative group of __________________________ today but this isn’t fascism. For all I know, these people like to kind of sort of uh... pump up their own sense of martyrdom. Well, I’m defying those fascists. No. Yeah, defying the fascists meant you got your heads broken by thugs and you were thrown in prison and that does not happen in this country to Americans POTTINGER: Is this the biggest change you’ve seen in 26 hears? FRANK: That is the biggest change. POTTINGER: What is it that makes a scandal become a scandal versus one that could have but didn’t? FRANK: Was real harm done to another human being, and that’s a big deal. If you have done real serious harm to another human being, then uh... you are unlikely to be forgiven and shouldn’t be. But we are talking about things that are-- that don’t involve that. Hypocrisy is one of the factors. Uh... I’ve said uh... with regard for instance to outing closeted gay people. Uhm... If they have been actively homophobic themselves, like that mayor out in Spokane, yeah, he should have been outed. The right to privacy should not become a shield for hypocrisy. Uhm... Beyond that and- and you did ask about, you know, how do you get magnified. It is certainly the case that-- and here’s the _______________________ because I was involved in a scandal, right, during the period when I was closeted and was having enormous difficulty finding satisfying emotional relationships. I got involved with prostitutes and mistakenly tried to infuse one of those relationships with a kind of emotional seriousness that was inappropriate. I was stupid and- and got burned. And here’s the problem. The- the guy involved got angry at me when I realized what was going on and ordered him out of my life and he decided he was gonna destroy me. But in the interim, between that and his deciding to come after me, I had acknowledged that I was gay. So his main weapon was no longer available to him. I had publicly voluntarily came out two and half years before he did anything. And uh... So he was then forced to frankly invent some things that he charged me with doing. Now I hadn’t done those but I could not have effectively denied having done those things without having acknowledged that I had in fact hired for sex. And this is often the problem. You do something wrong. You are then accused of doing seven things wrong, but the only way to deny the six is to admit the one and all the good advice is don’t admit it. Part of the problem is lawyers. People should understand if you are on trial for your freedom, then you probably want to listen to a lawyer. But if you’re not on trial for your freedom, don’t listen to a lawyer because he or she has a different set of rules. His only concern is to say “Okay, we’re gonna prevent criminal liability from attaching.” The fact that everybody may think you’re a rat, that’s not the lawyer’s problem. POTTINGER: You said around 2003 or 2004 if John Kerry was elected and you didn’t take the Congress, you might run for the Senate. FRANK: Yeah, if John Kerry had been elected president and uh... we did not take the House back because obviously we didn’t, I would have run in the special election for the Senate. When I say we didn’t take the House back, is if we do, I’m chairman of a committee that has a major impact in the economic- economic area and I would- I would rather do that than financial services. So again, if we take the House back, I expect to spend the next few years working seriously on some economic issues. If not, then uh... and John Kerry decides not to run for re-election in 2008, uh... I’d run for the Senate. POTTINGER: Thinking of anything beyond that? FRANK: Oh, no, no. Well, for one thing uhm... I’m 66 years old so uhm... I getting to the point where-- Well, I’m not uh... Some time in my early 70s, me and my dignity are getting the hell out of here. |
