The 86-year-old spoke to CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday about his new book, The Hard Path to Unity: Why we must reform the left to rescue democracy.

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Frank said Progressives were making a crucial mistake on culturally sensitive issues like transgender people in sports, by “taking the most controversial parts of the agenda and turning them into litmus tests.”

“Obviously, I’ve been working for gay rights — started in 1972 when I filed the bill, and we in the movement to established fairness for gay and lesbian and bisexual people,” Frank said, continuing:

We picked to work on those issues, which were more acceptable. We didn’t get to marriage until after these other things had been resolved. And that’s what I’m suggesting that we do today. The analog is male to female transsexuals playing sports that are for women. I understand a lot of anger about that. And I think in the interest of the transgender community as well as others, it would be better to go at that in a more granular way and not simply announce that if you don’t support it, you’re a homophobe.