Hey, I'm Jeffrey Masters, and for the final episode of our season, we are joined by the former

Congressman Barney Frank. Now, Barney served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 32 years,

from 1981 to 2013. He was one of the first members of Congress to come out publicly and his career there.

It really spans across an incredible chunk of the modern LGBTQ rights movement.

We talk about that today, about the, quote, personal misery as he describes it that led

him coming out in the 80s.

And we also talk about how AIDS forced Congress to act and pass legislation in a way that they

hadn't before when it came to gay issues.

Discrimination against gay people, it really was hidden before this.

And Barney says that it was AIDS in particular that helped to bring so many of these issues that affect our community into the spotlight.

So without further ado, this is LGBTQ&A with Barney Frank. So you always said that growing up, you thought that being gay in a politician, it meant that those things are mutually exclusive.

You could not do both.

And yet you still decided to run for office the first time in the

70s. Why run for office if you thought that was impossible? Well, things change. Very few single

events in American history have had the impact at Stonewall had in 1969 in giving people

a signal that change was possible.

I did not publicly acknowledge being gay until 1987.

And in fact, when I was in the state legislature in 1972,

I became the first person in Massachusetts history

to file a gay rights bill, but I still didn't come out.

And I don't think I could

have been elected if I was. At the time that I said I couldn't get elected if I was out,

...