I think this short interview I did with Barney Frank after he retired from the US Congress is relevant to where we are today. It took place in Philadelphia during a Conference sponsored by EQUALITY, a Lesbian and Gay group long identified with the conservative, assimilationist, single-issue politics of the post-Harry Hay Mattachine Society. I attended because Martin Duberman was speaking and because Mariela Castro had been granted a visa to speak and I wanted to talk with her. Castro had recently founded with government support in Havana Cuba the Institute of National Center for Sex Education
Frank was in attendance, and I caught up with him, and we talked briefly.
It is interesting to note that Philadelphia has a rich history in the homosexual movement. Mattachine/ Daughters of Bilitis activists Barbara Gittings and her lover, the photographer, Kay Tobin (aka Kay Tobin Lahusen), lived in Philledelhia. I believe Kay is still alive living in assisted living ...at least she was at the time of the Equality conference in 2013. Gittings and Tobin had the enormous political influence on the EQUALITY group. David Carter, the author of the much-disputed history of the Stonewall Rebellion, titled inappropriately STONEWALL RIOTS sat on their knees. Gittings politics were informed by her and Mattachine's single issue politics to the point that she rejected for most of her life feminism and called herself a "gay: woman, not a lesbian. Of course, this must be put in the context of the '40's and '50 political environment of political homophobia.
Personally, I think Frank would have been a Democratic Party VP nominee if he had not been outed in a DC scandal
Personally, I think Frank would have been a Democratic Party VP nominee if he had not been outed in a DC scandal
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