Friday, October 21, 2016

October 21 - Barney Frank

Barney Frank

Barney Frank is the first member of Congress to voluntarily come out publicly when he did so in 1987, seven years after first being elected to the House of Representatives. A Democrat representing Massachusetts, Frank served for over thirty years, including a stint as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee from 2007-2011. He is known for being a co-sponsor on the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, the most significant financial regulation bill since the Great Depression. Frank is also well known for having been one of the quickest and wittiest members of Congress. Frank was a staunch supporter of civil rights. He supported reparations for Japanese internment during WWII; he co-sponsored an amendment to apply equal rights to gender differences; he was pro affirmative action; he helped write the 1990 Immigration Act, which excluded LGBT people from being denied entrance to the US based on their sexuality; he was a proponent of same-sex marriage (and even married his own partner in 2010); and he founded the National Stonewall Democrats in 1998, the national LGBT Democratic organization. Throughout his career, Frank maintained 100% ratings from both the NAACP and the Human Rights Campaign for his civil rights stances. Though he retired from Congress in 2013, he remains active in political circles and released his memoir Frank in 2015.

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