Barney Frank, the quick-witted Massachusetts congressman and liberal lion who helped overhaul Wall Street regulations after the 2008 financial crisis and made history as one of the first openly gay members of Congress, died Wednesday, his sister confirmed toNBC Boston.
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He was 86. He had entered hospice care at his home in Maine last month.
“He was, above all else, a wonderful brother. I was lucky to be his sister,” Frank’s sister Doris Breay told NBC Boston.
Frank represented southern Massachusetts in the House for 32 years and established himself as a leading voice in debates over banking, affordable housing and LGBTQ rights. He chaired the Financial Services Committee amid the 2008 meltdown and co-authored the milestone Dodd-Frank Act, a sweeping law that sought to put Wall Street firms under tougher scrutiny.
He blazed a trail for other openly gay American elected officials, and in 2012, he became the first member of Congress to enter into a same-sex marriage, tying the knot with his longtime partner, Jim Ready.
“It was life-changing, lifesaving for me,” Frank told NBC News in a phone interview in last month.
“I think the key to our having made the enormous progress we made in defeating anti-gay prejudice had to do with us all coming out and people discovering the gap between our reality and the way we were painted,” he added.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the former House speaker, who served with Frank for more than 25 years, described him as progressive and an idealist in an interview with NBC News last month.
“He has been about idealism and pragmatism to get the job done,” said Pelosi, who was speaker when Frank shepherded Dodd-Frank through Congress. Frank called Pelosi last month to inform her that he was receiving hospice care, she said.
Source: Drudge Report
