I think it’s been appropriate in the past when people have outed anti-abortion members of Congress who had facilitated their partner having an abortion. And by the way, it’s not just with regard to LGBTQ rights. The right to privacy does not include the right to hypocrisy.Ībsolutely. You mentioned this point earlier, but in the past you’ve promoted what some have referred to as the “Frank rule.” It’s another when a colleague is asking you to do something deeply personal. It’s one thing for me as a ‘straight person’ to ask my colleagues to vote for gay rights when they’d say it was politically difficult. And it advanced my advocacy of gay rights. Politically, people said ‘well, he’s being honest.’ It made me, frankly, more relaxed. So I came out and to my great surprise, it helped. But you’re a very effective ally now on a whole range of causes.’ They were afraid that if I came out, my influence would be diminished in every area but in gay rights. But a number of my straight colleagues-maybe six or seven, the most liberal, most supportive of LGBT rights-came to me and said, ‘Please don’t do that. Understandably, gay people who knew I was going to come out were very enthused. Before I came out, it was not a great secret that I was gay. What was the response from your colleagues? When I went to Washington, I thought I could somehow find a way to have that emotional and physical outlet-without being public. Everybody has emotional and physical needs that have to be expressed. I just couldn’t live anymore with the frustrations and emotional choking of trying to hide my private life-I couldn’t have a satisfactory private life. In 1987, you became the first Congressman to choose to publicly come out as gay. And Pope John Paul II ordered him not to run again. Specifically, there was a Congressman from the district next to mine, who was a very liberal Jesuit priest. I’d gone to law school, and I was going to become a practicing lawyer. I had then decided by the end of the 1970s that I was going to retire and come out publicly. Every year I find out another one is gay.’ He said, ‘Here’s the problem-I’m trying to get people to sponsor gay rights bills in all these legislatures, and I’ve been bragging about how many straight people I have supporting the bills. He was disappointed, and I was disappointed that he was disappointed. And to the then-leader of the gay rights movement in America, a guy name Steve Endean. Towards the end of that eight years, by ‘78 or so, I began to come out to friends and relatives-maybe a couple of dozen people. That was my position for the next eight years while I was in the legislature.
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