Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage (18 page)

The anti-gay forces did not explicitly oppose AIDS-related research or helping individuals who were suffering from AIDS. Instead, they proposed a series of amendments that would have required organizations that received AIDS-related funding to adopt policies that were in effect anti-gay. If they accepted federal funds, these groups could do nothing to indicate that they regarded homosexuality as in any way acceptable or benign. Literally, the amendments required recipients to refrain from “promoting homosexuality.” Groups that offered counseling services for troubled teenagers, or forums in which gay and lesbian life could be discussed in a positive way, would have been ineligible for the funds. Hospitals would find it harder to refrain from stigmatizing gay and lesbian patients. Collectively, the provisions were known as the “No Promo Homo” amendments.

I was a leader in the fight against these amendments, working closely with a task force that had been set up by the Democratic leadership under Tony Coelho and Steny Hoyer. We were very fearful that the amendments would pass and retard the ability of caregivers and researchers to use government funds effectively. After Jesse Helms scored one such victory in 1987, a coalition of most Democrats and some Republicans—notably, Senator Orrin Hatch—devised an effective counterstrategy. That was to amend the damaging language so that while it still expressed negative sentiments it had no legal effect.

While the anti-gay forces in Congress generally refrained from singling out AIDS sufferers, there was one exception to their indirect strategy. This was a House amendment to the Americans with Disabilities Act that had the clear effect of allowing restaurants and other food-related enterprises to refuse to assign anyone who was HIV positive to a food-handling job. That provision was dropped in its entirety by the Senate and, after a heavy lobbying effort by the House Democratic leadership, it was left out of the final bill. These victories made AIDS funding more effective and improved the gay rights movement’s political fortunes. I knew of no case where any member was defeated because he or she helped block the “No Promo Homo” efforts.

Unfortunately, AIDS advocates did not always recognize how important it was that majorities in both the House and Senate had stood up for a bias-free response to the crisis. Flamboyantly homophobic statements made by certain politicians received, understandably, a great deal of media attention. Advocates who fought hard for what rightly seemed to them simple common sense resented that they had to fight at all. And Ronald Reagan’s inattention understandably prompted outrage—even as it also diverted attention from Congress’s successful efforts to combat bias.

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While the AIDS funding debates went on, I worked especially hard on another LGBT-related issue: removing the blatantly homophobic provisions of American immigration law. As I mentioned, when I got to the House, people afflicted with “psychopathic personalities” and “sexual deviation” were flatly prohibited from coming to America, either as visitors or permanent residents.

This egregious example of bigotry did not stand alone. It was characteristic of the exclusionary laws that followed the anarchist Leon Czolgosz’s assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. Along with a general aversion to Italians, Greeks, Jews, Poles, and Russians, there was a fear of other “undesirables,” including anarchists, people with mental illnesses, and us. These bans were strengthened in the 1921 immigration law, which explicitly imposed national origin quotas to preserve the ethnic—and political—balance that existed at the time.

Given the House’s overwhelming support for keeping D.C.’s sodomy law on the books, I had no reason to think that repealing the prohibition on allowing sodomites into the country could prevail on a stand-alone vote. Fortunately, there was no need to try that approach. The Judiciary Committee was attempting a complete rewrite of immigration law, and I was to be an active participant in that lengthy and ultimately successful effort. Because the exclusion rules would be rewritten from scratch, I did not need to pass an amendment ending the LGBT ban; instead, I could simply ensure that the ban was omitted from the new rules—a much easier task. My effort had the support of many liberals and of three Republicans with leadership roles: Hamilton Fish and Daniel Lungren in the House, and Alan Simpson in the Senate.

Nonetheless, the work proved long and difficult. Opposition to the full immigration overhaul came primarily from the right. But there was some resistance on the left as well: Hispanic groups and their allies feared that the adoption of sanctions on employers who hired illegal immigrants would erect employment barriers for Hispanic citizens, whom wary employers might hesitate to hire as well. In response, I took the lead in drafting language to minimize Hispanic concerns about job discrimination. But I also said I would not support reform unless the obnoxious exclusions on “undesirables” were removed.

When the leadership realized that passing one comprehensive bill would be too heavy a political lift, they divided it into two parts. The first bill offered amnesty for some illegal immigrants, and the second bill, which was to be taken up only after the first bill passed, dealt with legal immigration.

I was willing to follow this path, but there was a problem. The anti-gay exclusion I was determined to end pertained only to legal immigrants. After all, there was no point applying it to illegal immigrants, who were already excluded no matter what their situation. This meant that even if the first bill passed and some illegal immigrants were granted amnesty, the exclusion provisions, including the anti-gay provision, would remain in full effect. As a result, gay people, among others, would be denied the benefit of that amnesty.

Fortunately, my leverage was at its maximum on that first vote, since amnesty was controversial and the measure needed all the support it could get. I said that I could not vote for the illegal immigration bill without knowing that I would have reciprocal support when the legal immigration bill came up. I received that support from the three Republicans who had won my strongest confidence: Fish, Lungren, and Simpson.

There was still a problem: Until we passed the second bill, the anti-gay provisions would remain in place for amnesty applicants. I was able to resolve the issue with an amendment allowing the commissioner of immigration to waive the exclusion of gay and lesbian amnesty seekers pending comprehensive reform. Once again I relied on someone in whom I had the utmost confidence: Alan Nelson, the immigration commissioner. With Reagan’s approval, he used his waiver authority to protect LGBT applicants for citizenship.

At the time, the ranks of amnesty seekers included a large number of Marielitos—the Cubans who’d been expelled by Fidel Castro a few years before. These were Castro’s “undesirables.” Given his homophobia—which his leftist admirers in the United States tried to overlook—it wasn’t surprising that so many of them were gay men, expelled solely for that reason.

When the commissioner agreed to waive the exclusion, most of them were given legal status with little problem. But I did receive a call from an attorney representing a Cuban who had been denied papers yet could not return home. It turned out that the INS agent who’d interviewed the man had used an obsolete form that directly asked if the applicant was a homosexual. Through his translator, the man answered no. He was then asked if he had ever had sexual relations with another man. Here the language barrier loomed large. His response was recorded as “No; I fooled around some, but I never had a real relation.” In the margin of the form, the agent recorded that the man, on advice of counsel, sought to withdraw that answer but was denied permission to do so. When I learned of this, I went directly to Commissioner Nelson. With a laugh, he agreed to overrule the denial of amnesty and reissue his earlier order that all efforts to ask “the question” come to an end.

When immigration reform came back to the committee in 1988, it needed every vote it could get. By then, I had come out of the closet, and I made it clear that I could not offer my support to any legislation that included a legally binding reaffirmation of my inherent undesirability. When the bill finally reached the floor of the House in 1990, it failed on its first vote for reasons unrelated to the repeal of the anti-gay provision. I reported this tearfully to my partner at the time, worried all my efforts had come to naught. But it was resuscitated with bipartisan support and passed the second time. Senators Kennedy and Simpson ensured Senate acquiescence, and in 1990, President Bush signed the bill that eliminated the worst anti-LGBT provision ever put into American law.

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My growing engagement with LGBT issues was deeply intertwined with the significantly increased attention I was giving to my own situation. Bluntly stated, my publicly neuter, privately gay approach was becoming incompatible with my increasing public recognition. This had both a personal and political dimension.

On the personal side, I wanted a healthy relationship with another man, but this was not easy to find. At a time when many gay people were trying to reconcile their sexuality with the demands of their professional and family ties, the stress of helping me sort out my personal and official roles was more than other gay men wanted to deal with. For guys who had opted for openness, helping me avoid exposure was an unwelcome burden they had left behind. For those still closeted, the rumors of my orientation—by then fairly widespread among insiders—invited unwanted scrutiny. I was tired of having to desex my pronouns, ration my visits to places I wanted to be, and avoid dancing with another man anywhere I might be photographed. (This was pre-Internet, when discretion was easier.)

What I did not fully realize at the time was that my attendance at the 1984 Democratic convention in San Francisco was a turning point. I went there with Joel Farley—a gay friend, not a romantic interest—and we stayed at a hotel apart from the Massachusetts delegation so I would have some privacy. He and I attended a party at the Marin County home of my colleague Barbara Boxer, then and since a fervent defender of LGBT equality. On an impulse, I quietly told her that Joel and I were there on a platonic date. She reacted with no surprise and considerable warmth. We went on to an event at a gay club, where I did dance, knowing that there would be no photographers present. The next day I addressed the convention at the invitation of the Mondale campaign. My remarks were distinctly unmemorable. I abided by the rule that speakers were to stick to carefully vetted scripts. In subsequent convention speeches, I reverted to my preference for speaking mostly extemporaneously. I realized that all I had to do was submit some pages of text, have them approved by convention staffers—who rarely impressed me with their expertise in speech giving—and then stand on the platform and say what I wanted, secure in the knowledge that no trapdoor on the stage would open beneath me. I may have inadvertently set a bad example for Clint Eastwood, who would so embarrassingly lose a debate with an empty chair twenty years later.

The next evening I attended a private party at a gay bar, and met Todd Dickinson, a lawyer active in San Francisco’s gay politics, and we began a two-year relationship. (We remained good friends after we stopped dating, and he later served as the head of the Patent and Trademark Office in the Clinton administration.) The emotional effect of all this was overwhelming—and positively so. For the first time in my life, I’d combined socializing with other gay men and important political activity. For that week, the two halves of my life—personal and political—came together, and I knew I could not return to keeping them in separate spheres.

The conflict between my crusade against homophobia in the country and my accommodating it in my own life was becoming unbearable. I had to resolve an agonizing problem: How could I pride myself on being a national advocate for achieving LGBT equality while refusing to take the one important step that was directly under my control? I could no longer urge other members to show political courage on our behalf while I opted for cowardice. So I decided at last to come out.

As I noted, the media still observed the custom of never disclosing anyone’s homosexuality without permission unless some scandal precipitated it. Initially, this tradition had allowed me to hide; now that I decided to be honest, it enabled me to control the timing and circumstances of the revelation.

But not entirely. Politicians’ careers are rarely under their control. When Harold Macmillan, the former British prime minister, was asked what factors had the strongest influence on political outcomes, he reportedly said, “Events, dear boy, events.”

Before I could leave the closet, I had to deal with events. My close friend Gerry Studds represented the neighboring congressional district, which covered New Bedford and much of southeasern Massachusetts. For many years, he, too, had lived in the closet. But in 1983, he became entangled in a controversy involving his relationship to a male House page. In the past, when political figures were publicly linked to homosexual acts, they either implausibly denied they were gay or, even more implausibly, claimed they couldn’t remember the alleged events because they were too drunk at the time. (I believe that whenever you are too drunk to remember what happened, it’s likely that very little actually happened.) Studds took a different tack: He acknowledged his sexuality and became the first openly gay member of Congress. Studds was censured by the House after Newt Gingrich, in one of his intermittent poses as a paragon of virtue, substituted that harsher penalty for the committee’s recommendation of reprimand. (I voted in the minority for the reprimand.)

Studds ran for reelection the following year, 1984, and drew serious opponents in both the Democratic primary and the final election. He won both races, though not by overwhelming margins, and his victories made two things clear for me. One, I no longer had any electoral excuse for not being publicly honest about my sexuality. If Studds could win despite the unhappy circumstances surrounding his coming out, there was no serious possibility that my purely voluntary declaration would cause my defeat.