Barney Frank came out in 1987 [View all]

I was 19 and still in the closet. The fact is back in 1987, the idea of being a gay professional (say lawyer or teacher or doctor) was at best difficult to see happening. Sodomy laws not only existed but were explicitly upheld by the Supreme Court (ironically a closeted gay man was clerking for Justice Powell at the time). Marriage equality was considered a fringe idea even in the gay rights community.

I have now been a teacher for coming up on three decades, and for pretty much all of that I have been out to fellow teachers and for close to 20 years I have been out to students. Again, that was very rare back when Frank came out. Even in a liberal district in a liberal state it was by no means assured he would win reelection, but win he did and he never looked back electorally.

The fact is Frank helped advance the LGBT community during his time in office. Though to be fair, he was not nearly as good at or interested in advancing trans rights. I wish he had been better about trans issues than he was. But overall he helped far more than he hurt the community.

By early in Obama's term he was the most powerful gay legislator the country had ever seen but on his signature issue (financial reform after the crash of 2008) the fact he was a gay man largely didn't come up. It had been over 10 years since Dick Armey called him Barney Fag and the coverage of him and the law centered, sensibly, on what the law would do and why he wrote it.

Like him, my being gay is not an issue at work for the most part. I am known as the Infinite Campus guy and for teaching both Social Studies and math (unusual in high school). The fact is people like Barney Frank paved that way for many of us.

I know for those coming in adulthood recently and now the world of Barney Frank's early Congressional career and my early adulthood is as remote as black and white movies and WW2 were to me but for those of us who remember this time frame it was a very real thing, not some period piece.

If one judges a life well lived as a life that left the world better than it was before, Frank had a life well lived.