The Importance of Being Frank

Graphical History Tour remembers former Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA), who passed away Tuesday night at age 86.

in Q SaltLake, March, 1999

Barney Frank was elected to Congress in 1980, succeeding Rev. Robert Drinan, who had left office in order to comply with Pope John Paul II's call for priests to withdraw from government positions. Q SaltLake asked me to draw the above caricature of Rep. Frank for their cover story on his upcoming speech at a dinner of the Utah Stonewall Democrats, an LGBTQ organization.

Frank earned a reputation as an outspoken, quick- and sharp-witted liberal, but it must be noted that he was very pragmatic, even on LGBTQ+ issues. In the 1990's, he counseled marriage equality advocates that the public were not ready to accept same-sex marriage. In his last public interview, however, he argued that marriage equality is safe because Republicans today would be afraid of the backlash were our marriages to be taken away.

Perhaps the interviewer thought it impolite to bring up the fate of the landmark Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act during Republican rule.

Frank wasn't the first openly gay Congressman; Gerry Studds (D-MD) had been outed at the center of a scandal over Congressmen having affairs with congressional pages. (Studds was censured in 1983 for having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old page ten years earlier; he retired from Congress in 1997.) Frank was, however, the first member of Congress to come out as gay voluntarily, in 1987.

in Ranger, University of Wisconsin at Parkside, Sept. 21, 1989 

The first cartoon I drew of Barney Frank was, unfortunately, when it appeared that his political career was about to be cut short because of a sex scandal of his own. He had befriended Steve Gobie, a prostitute, hiring him as an aide, housekeeper, and driver in 1985. He evicted Gobie in 1987 after their landlord told Frank that Gobie continued operating as a male escort, even bringing clients to their shared home.

This became public in 1989 when Gobie decided to sell his story to the highest bidder, but gave it away to the Washington Times. Frank called for a House Ethics Committee investigation, claiming to have had no knowledge of Gobie's extracurricular activities at their home. Rep. Larry Craig (R-ID) led the push to censure Frank; but in the end, he was merely reprimanded for misrepresenting Gobie's criminal probation record, and for using his congressional office to fix 33 parking tickets Gobie had racked up.

Craig, by then a senator, would have his own gay sex scandal in 2007.

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., Jan. 30, 1995

During a January 20, 1995 radio interview discussing a possible book deal, House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) said, “I like peace and quiet and I don’t need to listen to Barney Fag, [pause] Barney Frank, haranguing in my ear because I made a few bucks off a book.” 

The slur was reported by several radio networks, whereupon Armey blamed the media for reporting on what he claimed was an audio glitch, not a slip of the tongue or intentional insult.

Rep. Frank refused to accept Armey's excuses, saying, “There are a lot of possible ways to mispronounce my name but that one, I think, is the least common, ... I turned to my own expert, my mother, who reports that in 59 years of marriage, no one ever introduced her as Elsie Fag.”

After a separate incident of Armey making a poor joke about Frank's homosexuality, a reporter asked Frank if he wanted an apology from the Texan. "I’m trying to think of what I would be less interested in than an apology from Dick Armey," he replied. "Maybe the lyrics to the national anthem of Bhutan."

for Q Syndicate, Aug., 1998

Frank's office requested the original of this cartoon. I have no idea whether he still has it.

When Republicans in Congress were holding hearings in preparation to file impeachment charges against President Bill Clinton over his sex scandal, Barney Frank seemed to be the only Democrat willing to speak up in Clinton's defense.

for Q Syndicate, Nov., 1998

Wisconsin's Second District elected Tammy Baldwin to Washington in 1998, the first out lesbian representative in Congress, so I drew Barney Frank offering her some practical advice.

for Q Syndicate, March, 2009

I tried looking up why I included Barney Frank in this cartoon about the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, but it dates from two months before I started this blog. (and I couldn't find it among oocities.com's cached pages of my previous Geocities blog). 

Did Frank call Scalia a homophobe? I guess I wouldn't have put it past him, and I can't think of another reason why I would have drawn him in the foreground.

It is, however, my best example of drawing his famously rumpled couture.

for Q Syndicate, March, 2011

This cartoon caught some ridicule from a web page (now long dormant) dedicated to ridiculing editorial cartoons, in part for daring to run afoul of the litigious Dr. Seuss Estate. The topic was the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill proposed in successive Congresses to afford workplace protections to LGBTQ+ private sector employees.

It faced stubborn resistance from Republicans and other conservatives. In 2007, Frank proposed deleting transgender rights from the bill, in what proved to be a futile ploy to attract support from moderate Republicans which succeeded only in deeply dividing the LGBTQ+ community. 

for Q Syndicate, Oct., 2007

Frank's reasoning was that transgender rights could be added back in someday if ENDA ever became law; transgender activists and their allies are profoundly disappointed by what to this day they regard as outright betrayal.

Congress never has passed ENDA in any form. In an interview with Washington Blade's Lou Chibarro, Jr., after he entered hospice care this month, Frank noted that the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) that employment discrimination against LGBTQ+ persons is illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a ruling Frank was confident the Court would never overturn — and if it did, Congress would step in and pass ENDA into law.

He must never have met Mike Johnson.

for Q Syndicate, Dec., 2011

No, this is not my eulogy cartoon for the Congressman.

The 2010 census resulted in Massachusetts losing a seat in Congress. In the redistricting plan produced by the state legislature, the Democratic stronghold of New Bedford was removed from Frank's district. While Brookline, Newton and Wellesley remained in the district, Frank announced shortly after Governor Deval Patrick signed the redistricting plan into law that he would not run for a 17th term.

My reference, of course, is to the reported last words of Oscar Wilde, another gay icon with a not unblemished history. (In trying to verify the quotation for this post, I've found several variations on its theme, so take it with a grain of smelling salts.)

That was the last cartoon I have drawn of Barney Frank — at least so far. I am likely obliged to draw an actual eulogy cartoon for him for release next week. If not, he's got a book coming out in September.

Given his record, the book is not going to be pablum.