Barney Frank dies at 86 after Maine hospice

Former Rep. Barney Frank, the first member of Congress to voluntarily come out as gay, died Tuesday at 86 after entering hospice care at his home in Maine less than a month earlier. A longtime Democratic lawmaker from southern Massachusetts, Frank helped resha

Barney Frank knew the fight was moving on even as his body was running out of time.

He died Tuesday at 86, less than a month after he entered hospice care at his home in Maine. His sister, Doris Breay, confirmed his death to NBC News on Wednesday, saying, “He was, above all else, a wonderful brother,” and “I was lucky to be his sister.”

For 32 years. Frank represented southern Massachusetts in the House as a Democrat—and. for much of that time. he carried two public missions that rarely stayed separate. He became one of the most consequential architects of Wall Street regulation in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. And he helped reshape what LGBTQ people could demand from the country’s politics. including in the moments when doing so made his own life harder.

Frank’s family said he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure.

His path to Congress began far from the spotlight. Born Barnett Frank on March 31, 1940, in New Jersey, he was a Harvard University graduate. He taught undergraduate government classes while pursuing a PhD. but he gave up his studies a year short of his doctorate when he left to work as chief of staff to Boston Mayor Kevin White.

Later. he became an assistant to Rep Michael Harrington. a Massachusetts Democrat. before running for an open seat in the Massachusetts state legislature. Although the district had leaned Republican for generations. Frank won the 1972 election and built a reputation as an advocate for liberal causes. His first bill would have prohibited discrimination in housing and employment on the basis of sexual orientation.

He served three terms in the legislature before winning a congressional race in 1980. He went on to win re-election 15 times, retiring in 2013.

In Congress, Frank’s name became shorthand for candor and political risk. In 1987, he became the first member of Congress to voluntarily declare he was gay. He made that decision after Rep. Stewart McKinney. R-Conn. died of AIDS — and Frank said he wanted to avoid the kind of speculation about McKinney’s sexuality that followed his death.

“There was such an unseemly scuffle after he died,” Frank told The New York Times. He said he did not want people asking, “Was he or wasn’t he?”

That openness did not immunize him from controversy. Frank’s sexuality played into a scandal in 1989 after he was accused of hiring a male prostitute as a personal employee and using his office to benefit the man. The House voted to reprimand Frank, but stopped short of imposing a more serious punishment.

Then came one of the defining policy chapters of his later career.

In 2007. Frank became chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. just before a housing bubble burst and drove the country into a lengthy recession. Critics claimed that his support of mortgages for low-income borrowers contributed to the collapse. Frank’s defenders pointed to the longer arc of what he helped build next.

In 2009, Frank and Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., coauthored the Dodd-Frank Act, a package of regulations and reforms of the financial services and consumer finance industries. The bill was signed into law later that year.

Even after 15 years of being the first member of Congress to voluntarily come out as gay, he kept pushing at history’s boundaries.

In July 2012. Frank married his longtime partner. Jim Ready. becoming the first member of Congress to enter into a same-sex marriage. Frank had already decided not to seek re-election that year. But he said he wanted to get married before retiring, hoping it would normalize same-sex marriage among his fellow lawmakers.

“I think it’s important that my colleagues interact with a married gay man,” Frank said.

His death closes a life that moved in public on a tightrope—between legislative power and personal vulnerability. between the urgency of regulating Wall Street and the insistence on being seen as himself. And for those who watched him when he was both target and trailblazer. the ending has a particular kind of weight: hospice care at home in Maine. and then a message from his sister that reduced everything to the simplest fact of all.

“He was, above all else, a wonderful brother,” Doris Breay told NBC Boston. “I was lucky to be his sister.”

Barney Frank former representative Massachusetts Congress LGBTQ rights Dodd-Frank Act Wall Street regulation same-sex marriage hospice congestive heart failure Kevin White