Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage (21 page)

When I became the chair and started to move the bill, I found out why. Democratic leaders assumed that some veterans’ organizations and voters with a rigid understanding of patriotism would oppose the legislation. But that alone would not have deterred them. The problem was that some senior Democrats believed the Japanese American community itself was divided on the issue. Some older people, including many who had lived through the physical and mental torment of relocation, did not want to relive that terrible time. Some also believed that anti-Japanese prejudice was still alive, and that demanding an official apology would kindle a backlash. I understood the reaction, because I had encountered similar feelings within the Jewish community. Many older Jews feared that a strong insistence on equal treatment would trigger a resurgence of anti-Semitism.

The problem was generational. Naturally, the older Democrats had closer associations with the older, more fearful Japanese Americans and saw no point in pushing a bill that might be strongly opposed by many of its intended beneficiaries. Just as I knew that the fears of some elderly Jews did not represent the sentiments of the larger group, Matsui and Mineta knew the same was true of their community. So they urged me to go forward. I did, using my authority as chairman to put the bill on the subcommittee agenda without asking for approval from either the committee chairman or the House leadership. I reasoned that while many members wished the legislation would not come up for a vote, they would have no choice but to support it if it did.

The legislative path turned out to be even easier than I had expected. Japanese American support was overwhelming, both in numbers and in enthusiasm. Opposition on patriotic grounds was far less than some had feared, although one inflamed Republican did lament on the House floor that if we passed the bill, she did not know how she could face her World War II veteran husband. (This was not the last time I was warned that my advocacy on an issue would jeopardize a heterosexual marriage, and the charge proved to be as unfounded then as it was later.)

In those pre–Tea Party days, I worked closely with Republicans to find consensus where we could—and to allow robust debate where we could not. Most Republicans supported the apology, and while many opposed compensation payments, those on my committee agreed not to obsruct the bill’s passage so long as they could later offer an amendment to strike the payments. The amendment failed, 162 to 237; the bill passed, 243 to 141; and there was no further opposition from any senior members.

One last hurdle had to be overcome. President Reagan, who also opposed the payments, threatened a veto. This was in the election year of 1988, and Vice President George H. W. Bush was running to succeed his boss. We pointed out, forcefully, that the bill was important not just to Japanese Americans but to all Asian constituencies. If the administration killed the bill, it would surely hurt Bush’s fortunes. Reagan’s advisers—by then, he was heavily dependent on them—accepted political reality. When he signed the bill in a White House ceremony outside the West Wing, I did not even try to restrain myself from pointing out the administration’s political calculation. As a result, I was informed, I was banned from the White House for the rest of Reagan’s term. Six months without going somewhere I rarely went anyway was a negligible price to pay.

I am as proud of my work on this issue as of anything else I have done in my public life. Contrary to the hackneyed phrase, this good deed not only went unpunished, it was richly rewarded. Seven years later, the Japanese American Citizens League’s board of directors unexpectedly recommended that the league endorse same-sex marriage at its annual convention.

For a nongay organization, representing a community not known for social radicalism, to take that position would be a major advance in our struggle. But opposition within the JACL membership was vocal and acceptance of the board’s recommendation very much in doubt. Needless to say, members of Congress typically avoid getting involved in angry disputes that are not already on their docket. And yet when Norm Mineta addressed the meeting, his message was direct: A gay man played the leading role in winning the fight for the Redress bill; we can’t walk away from helping him in the fight to win his rights. The conclusion of everyone involved was that Norm’s speech propelled the resolution to victory.

*

In 1986, the Democrats won solid majorities in both houses. Under the active leadership of Jim Wright, who’d just succeeded O’Neill as Speaker, and with the concurrence of the newly Democratic Senate, we adopted legislation advancing our goals in trade policy, welfare, civil rights, and arms control. I began to hope that the nation’s shift to the right was closely linked to Reagan’s political popularity and that the antigovernment tide had been significantly slowed, if not reversed.

But then came the 1988 presidential election. The competent, uncharismatic George Bush defeated Michael Dukakis, and he did so by demonizing liberals and making his famous pledge, “Read my lips, no new taxes.” Semantically, the phrase bothered me because it is illogical—you tell people to read your lips when they cannot hear you, and this does not apply when you are speaking to them through a microphone. But my ideological unhappiness was much greater. The pledge’s effectiveness demonstrated that public aversion to expanding government was alive and well.

When Congress reconvened in 1989, the previous year’s support for government expansion had dissipated. Democrats retained majorities in both Houses, but Bush’s decisive victory over “the liberal” significantly strengthened the hand of those who argued for a move toward the center in intraparty debates. That same year, Speaker Jim Wright felt compelled to resign when he faced the threat of an Ethics Committee rebuke over subsidized sales of a small book he had put together. It was an early triumph for Newt Gingrich’s campaign to substitute all-out partisan warfare for any notion of bipartisan cooperation.

Tom Foley of Washington was the House majority leader and thus in line to succeed Wright as Speaker. As the likelihood of Wright’s resignation became clear, rumors spread that Foley was gay. Disgracefully, some of these rumors came from senior Democrats who supported Foley’s rivals for the job. When I confronted two of them, John Murtha and Dan Rostenkowski, they vehemently denied it. I had no proof of their role, but none was necessary. In a pattern I’d first encountered with Boston police supervisors, the denial of guilt was followed by an end to the offending practice. Foley dealt indirectly with the matter by very conspicuously noting the presence of his wife in the gallery when he was sworn in as Speaker. Even so, the story did not die. It was taken seriously enough that one very respected journalist was tasked to verify a physical characteristic of Foley’s penis that had supposedly been reported to the police by a male sex partner. She indignantly refused, on both ethical and practical grounds.

Neither Foley’s anatomy nor any other evidence provided substantiation of the rumor, but that did not deter the Republican National Committee from a demagogic effort to exploit it. The RNC put out a leaflet titled “Tom Foley: Out of the Liberal Closet,” documenting the similarity between his voting record and that of someone they claimed was a randomly chosen liberal—me. (I had come out of the closet two years before.) It was a tactic typical of Lee Atwater, the master of political viciousness, who then chaired the committee.

In my response, I took inspiration from the turn-of-the-century Tammany Hall political hack George Washington Plunkitt. When Plunkitt was accused of profiting from inside knowledge of government spending, he protested, “I seen my opportunities, and I took ’em.” I saw the opportunity to call Atwater’s bluff, highlighting both the homophobia and the dishonesty of the attack. I could also renew my brief that such scurrility needed to be strongly attacked and not high-mindedly ignored.

Most important, I was among the few who could counterattack on Foley’s behalf without implicitly legitimizing the bigotry in question. People who are “accused” of membership in a minority group that is the target of prejudice face a dilemma. Indignant denial—How dare you say such a thing about me?—dissociates the accused from the bias while simultaneously reinforcing it. Saying nothing will lead many people to believe that you belong to the group but are ashamed to admit it—a stance that implies you think it is a bad thing to be. The inherent difficulty of the situation was best illustrated by the
Seinfeld
episode in which Jerry and George awkwardly add to the denial that they are gay the now-stock-comic phrase: “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

I did not need any disclaimer. Nor could I be accused of gratuitously injecting myself into a controversy that many of my colleagues wished would just go away. Atwater’s hatchet job didn’t only imply that Foley was guilty by association with homosexuality in general, it also impugned him for his closeness to me in particular.

The Speaker’s Lobby is a large room that adjoins the House floor. Admission is only for members, selected staff, and journalists accredited to cover Congress. I did not discover until my last term in office exactly how restricted it was. I tried to enter it with my husband, Jim, just after our marriage, and was stopped. My Adam Clayton Powell–conditioned reflex kicked in, and I started to object, but when I was told that no spouses were allowed, I apologized and Jim went to the cloakroom—where he had become a very popular figure with the staff of the snack bar. I was given to understand shortly afterward that members were not averse to the existence of at least one spouse-free zone in the building.

I realized that calling a formal press conference in response to Atwater’s attack on Foley would be dignifying it more than it deserved. Instead, I simply said my piece to the assembled reporters in the Speaker’s Lobby, addressing a few at first but gaining, as I knew I would, a larger audience as I spoke. My message was, in a word that is perhaps ironic in this context, straightforward. Obviously, I said, I did not consider being gay a defect in any way, shape, or form, but precisely for that reason I was very angry that the Republicans were treating it as if it were. Although I had no reason to believe that Foley was gay, I continued, I knew that there were closeted Republicans in the House. If the official voice of the national Republican Party continued to use the imputation of homosexuality as a political weapon, I would identify those members of the party who chose to benefit from this tactic while concealing their own sexual orientation. I would out them if I had to. It was big news.

I made my statement at the end of the week, and it was widely publicized over the weekend. The denouement came the following Monday night. When Herb and I returned home from a late dinner, the light on our message machine was blinking. Heather Foley had called and asked me to call back, no matter what time I got in. When I did, her husband told me that while attending an event that day, he’d been contacted by the White House switchboard and connected to Atwater, who had apologized for the leaflet. He’d unconvincingly denied any prior knowledge and promised it would be repudiated and never repeated. He then asked Foley if he knew how I was likely to respond to this information. Without Foley explicitly asking me, I immediately volunteered that I would consider the matter closed and would have nothing further to say about the sexuality of my colleagues. I was happy and relieved. Rarely had—or have—I taken a gamble that ended better. I had sucessfully articulated what became known as “the Frank rule” in discussions of sexual privacy: The right to privacy does not include the right to hypocrisy. But to this day I do not know what I would have done if the matter had escalated. I don’t know whether or not I would have carried out my threat.

Ten years earlier, the campaign against Foley would have damaged him, and probably rattled some of the Democrats who were voting on the next Speaker. And it likely would have gone unanswered. But in 1989, Atwater’s appeal to homophobia backfired emphatically, tarnishing him and greatly enhancing Foley’s position. The AIDS epidemic was still raging, but the crisis, it seemed, had weakened, not strengthened, homophobia. Atwater’s final act was an effort to appease the gods of political combat with a sacrifice—a hapless RNC employee, Mark Goodin, was fired for having allegedly acted on his own. The higher-ups’ denial of responsibility was widely disbelieved.

My satisfaction with my handiwork was enhanced when Wes Pruden, editor of the right-wing
Washington Times
, mocked the Republicans for backing down, especially, as he said with his usual finesse, to “a Democrat in lavender drawers.” Foley’s victory was also a great vindication for our cause. Unfortunately, my satisfaction soon turned to unbearable shame. In August 1989, Pruden got his revenge by exposing my two-year relationship with a male prostitute, Steven Gobie.

6

THE TRUE STORY OF DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL

One of my primary reasons for leaving the closet was my recognition that I’d been responding irresponsibly to its frustrations. My liaison with Gobie was Exhibit A. It began with pay for sex and evolved in my mind—but not his—into an ongoing nonsexual relationship. I knew this was inappropriate, but I lacked the emotional strength to bring the relationship to an end. It was only after I left the closet that I came at least partially to my senses and broke off relations with him. He reacted angrily and eventually took the story to
The Washington Times.

The revelation of Gobie’s role in my life devastated me. I was deeply ashamed and overcome by feelings of guilt. I deplored the damage I had done to the cause of LGBT equality; to Herb, who had known none of it when we began our relationship in 1987; to my family; and to my staff, as I knew that when a political figure messes up badly, those who work for him are automatically assigned much of the blame. I did have the presence of mind to state repeatedly that I’d taken great pains to conceal the relationship from the people in my office and none of them bore the slightest responsibility for my misbehavior.