Barney Frank, the longtime Democratic congressman and leading liberal who brought new visibility to gay rights and crafted the most significant reforms to the financial system in a generation, has died. He was 86.
Frank died late Tuesday, according to Jim Segel, Frank’s former campaign manager and close friend.
After representing broad swaths of Boston’s suburbs in Congress for 32 years, Frank and his husband moved to Ogunquit, Maine. He entered hospice there in April with congestive heart failure and is survived by his husband, Jim Ready, and sisters, the longtime Democratic strategist Ann Lewis and Doris Breay, along with brother David Frank.
Remembered as much for his intelligence and dedication as for his humor, we offer you a few of his funnier observations:
“I’m used to being in the minority. I’m a left-handed gay Jew. I’ve never felt, automatically, a member of any majority.”
“They appear to have become so attached to their outrage that they are even more outraged that they won’t be able to be outraged anymore.”
“I will tell you, I’m a lousy cook, but I think I’m a pretty good judge of a good meal.”
“I’m a good legislator. I’m a bad some other things.”
“It is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated.”
“I rule out that it was an innocent mispronunciation. I turned to my own expert, my mother, who reports that in 59 years of marriage, no one ever introduced her as Elsie Fag.”
This was in response to then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey’s claim that referring to Frank as “Barney Fag” during a press event was nothing more than “trouble with alliteration.”
