For two and a half decades, Barney Frank has represented Massachusetts in Congress. But more than that, Rep. Frank serves as an openly gay member of our nation’s legislature – one of only three currently serving. With Democrats poised to make major gains in both the House and Senate, leaders like Frank are out campaigning for Democratic challengers across the nation. This week, Frank comes to San Diego with the specific goal of adding another member to the GLBT Caucus in Congress: John Rinaldi. Frank took time out of his schedule to talk about hate crimes legislation, 9/11, Katrina, Bush’s legacy, same-sex marriage, Gavin Newsom and the need for Democrats to recapture Congress this fall.

Gay & Lesbian Times: First, tell me what brings you to San Diego.

Rep. Barney Frank: I was very happy to be asked to come out to San Diego to be part of John Rinaldi’s candidacy. I think it is very important for us to carry this fight to people who are on the other side. And [Rep.] Duncan Hunter has been one of the strongest voices in opposition. San Diego is an area, I think, where there are a lot of people who don’t share these prejudices. And I think this is especially relevant to John as a veteran because the way we have been making progress in the fight against homophobia is by posing our reality as a challenge to their prejudices.

It’s very important that the average citizen know who we are in our fullest diversity, and having someone like John with his military record, and the fact that he decided to stay on in San Diego, and that he’s done what he’s done is a great asset. Because, in my experience, the reality will beat the prejudice nine times out of 10. But if the reality doesn’t get aggressively presented, then the prejudice wins by default.

And it is especially important for us to start running races, not worrying on the outset about, “Oh, is this an easy win or not?” We’re a movement. We’re in a very important movement. We are confronting – those of us in the LGBT world – one of the deepest prejudices in the history of the world. It’s not the worst. Anti-Semitism and racism certainly cause a lot more problems. But it’s a deeply-rooted one, and it’s one of the few that is still sort of not officially opposed in the U.S.

When you’re in a movement, you better be in tough fights. [If] you sit back and wait for the easy fights, then you haven’t done much good. It becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don’t take on the fights when they are tough and confront the problem, then you don’t break down the prejudice. So I think John’s candidacy is a very important effort in that fight, so I’m going to San Diego to help.

GLT: I last interviewed you five years ago when San Diego hosted an LGBT Human Rights conference. Have things gotten better globally?

BF: I guess I would say, in general, I think it’s improved because we’re taking the fight everywhere. Now, sometimes, people are saying, “Look, I think things have gotten temporarily worse here,” etc. The point is that when the people who are being oppressed are quiet, then everything looks OK. The process of fighting for social change generally makes progress, but it doesn’t come easily. There is a reactionary effort. So people who sit back quietly and take it sometimes appear to be better off, but of course they’re not – psychologically or in other ways.

In much of the world – certainly in much of Western Europe – the situation has made some real gains in terms of recognizing a full range of rights. The mayor of Paris. The mayor of Berlin. Those are both openly gay men. The Scandinavian countries. The other countries in Western Europe. The military.

America is really in a minority, reactionary position in denying itself the talents and strengths and bravery of gay and lesbian people. In Britain, they are actively encouraging and recruiting LGBT people for the military. In Israel – pound for pound the most effective fighting force in the world, the Israeli Defense Forces – of course they have openly gay and lesbian people. So, yeah, there really is progress. Now, in some places, sadly, in some of the Eastern European countries and African countries, there has been a kind of negativism. But that negativism, it’s not that things have gotten worse, it’s just that these bad attitudes that people have, they’ve always had. There were just never any gay and lesbian people standing up to them. So things have become more visible but they haven’t gotten worse.

GLT: When the House Select Committee on Homeland Security was established, you were appointed. Tell me about the balance between security and privacy.

BF: There has to be a little less privacy and a little more security these days. The point, though, is that you don’t just ignore privacy. The very fact that – as you stated – it’s a balance is very important. Before Sept. 11, the law enforcement mode of the United States was deterrence. That’s basically what you do in a free society. In a free society you essentially give people the right to behave as they wish. What you say, though, is, “Here’s the deal: If you violate the rights of others, if you assault other people, if you destroy their property, steal their money, either with a gun or a checkbook, we will catch you if we can and we will then punish you.” That’s called deterrence. And, on the whole, it works well in a civilized society.

And then on Sept. 11, 2001, 19 vicious fanatics murdered people while committing suicide. Well, deterrence doesn’t work against people who are going to kill themselves. You can’t stop someone from killing other people in a suicide effort by threatening to throw them in prison. So we did at that point have to say, “OK, we’re going to have to give the law enforcement people more authority to reach out and stop these people before they start.” That does mean a reduction in privacy. What you hope is that you essentially focus the reduction of privacy on the bad guys. But as you diminish the privacy of people who plan bad things, now, obviously, there is a little bit of a stall there because everybody loses a little privacy.

But your objectives: First of all, you try to make sure that they focus on the people who they should focus on. Secondly, you have to have safeguards that say inevitably as you do this, some information is going to be gathered on people who are innocent and who feel there shouldn’t be this kind of gathering. You can’t make sure you never get that information. But what you can do is make sure you have very strict rules against it ever being used against people.

Our dispute with the Bush administration is that they want to do the increase in law enforcement without those kinds of safeguards. My short hand is that the law enforcement people are the good guys, but they’re not the perfect guys. There should be some checks on what they do.

GLT: Speaking of 9/11, what’s the real status on the “war on terror” right now?

BF: Well, we should make a couple of things clear. The war on terror, despite the nonsense being spewed by [Secretary of Defense] Donald Rumsfeld and [Vice President Dick] Cheney, it is not the same as the war against Hitler. Adolf Hitler, with his allies in Japan and Italy, unfortunately had the power to destroy freedom in much of the world. They physically took over countries. If we had not fought back, he could have very much isolated us. The Soviet Union had the power to destroy the United States. We had the power to destroy the Soviet Union.

The terrorists can’t destroy us. They can inflict harm on us, and we have to be very careful about them. But the future of our civilization is not at stake. We run the risk of innocent people being killed, and we need to do everything we can to fight that.

I think the war against terror improved, but the one major problem with that right now is the war in Iraq. It was justified by the Bush administration as part of the war on terror. But, in fact, in my judgment, it detracts from the war on terror. I did an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe saying a war is missing. We get Rumsfeld and Cheney giving this really outrageous lie that, “You liberals, you Democrats, you don’t want to fight terrorism. You just want to negotiate with them.” That’s just bullshit.

The murderers of Sept. 11 came out of Afghanistan. That was organized from Afghanistan. They were being sheltered by a vicious regime in Afghanistan, and I voted to go to war with them. So did [Rep.] Susan Davis. So did [Rep.] Bob Filner. So did [Senators] Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein. There was no hesitancy on our part about fighting the terrorists where they were – in Afghanistan. And the administration outrageously wants people to forget that there is a war in Afghanistan.

But how can you say, “Oh, you Democrats, you don’t want to go to war against the terrorists,” when we, in fact, did that. So then they say, “The real war against terrorism is the war in Iraq.” Saddam Hussein was a vicious guy, but he was not a terrorist in the sense that [Osama] bin Laden was. Saddam Hussein tried to take over Kuwait and we drove him out. Then he was a terrible problem with his own people. But so is [Zimbabwe president] Robert Mugabe. So are the terrible people who run Burma, which they call Myanmar.

Sadly, there are a number of leaders who badly mistreat their own people. I think we should be very critical of them, but I don’t think it makes sense to try and invade every country that is badly ruled, even if it is terribly badly ruled. You invade countries that make an aggressive attack on others. That’s Afghanistan and not Iraq. So I think the war on terror would be going better if we weren’t in Iraq. Of course, the war on terror is partly a physical thing, but it’s partly a political thing. And as a result of the war in Iraq, in part, America’s popularity has gone down. And our ability to combat terrorists has gone down.

People forget. They say, “Oh, well, it’s only inevitable people will be anti-American.” That wasn’t true after Sept. 11. We had a lot of sympathy and the war in Afghanistan was widely supported. There are today all kinds of European and other troops helping us in Afghanistan. The war in Afghanistan was seen as a legitimate act of self-defense. It’s the war in Iraq that’s destroyed that.

GLT: Did we send troops to Iraq ill-prepared?

BF: Yes. First of all, it’s not that the individual soldier wasn’t a very capable fighting man or woman. We didn’t send enough. General [Eric] Shinseki, who was the chief of staff during the run-up to Iraq, said this is going to take a couple hundred thousand troops. He was due to retire, and they were going to let him retire in disgrace. They repudiated him. So they didn’t send enough troops and they didn’t arm the troops well. So the troops were not prepared. Not in the sense that they weren’t very efficient fighters, because they were. But there were too little of them, the political situation was misunderstood and the Bush administration took steps to increase hostility in Iraq. They say now, “Well, we want the Iraqis to do it,” but we dismantled the Iraqi forces, inconsistent with our own view. We say, “Saddam was such a terrible man, and he is imposing himself on the people of Iraq,” and then we dismantled the whole Iraqi security apparatus so that there was nobody to help us.

GLT: Republicans are currently defining immigration as a security issue. Are they confusing the two?

BF: Yes. Immigration is a problem. But there is zero evidence so far that terrorists have come across the Mexican border. Now, legal immigration is a good thing for this country. Illegal immigration is a problem because it is not healthy for any society to have millions of people in that society who are illegal and can’t cooperate with law enforcement, and that ought to be addressed. But it’s not a terrorism issue.

You look at all the people that are arrested for terrorism. They’re not coming across the Mexican border. There were a couple who came across the Canadian border. And, by the way, if you really think terrorism is a major border issue, then you shouldn’t just be building a fence across the Mexican border, you need to build it across the 3,000-plus miles of the Canadian border.

Illegal immigration is an economic and social problem for us. It’s not a terrorism issue.

GLT: So, then, are we, five years after 9/11, any safer?

BF: It’s not that we’re safer, because there may be more bad people out there trying to do bad things to us, but we are better able to defend ourselves. We have got our defenses.

Here’s the problem, and this is the major reason why we’re not as safe as we could be: George Bush has decided to deprive the government of the revenues we need. You talk about more border guards and locking people up, and everything you talk about costs money. And I hear Bush saying, “The government is no good and we should cut taxes because the government can’t do anything.” But tax cuts don’t fight terrorism. And we don’t have enough border patrol. We don’t have enough people to screen cargo, both on airplanes and coming in on ships. We don’t have enough radios for our law enforcement and public safety people to be able to get together with each other. This insistence on reducing the resources that the government has undercuts our ability to protect ourselves.

GLT: Turning to a different kind of attack. We’re a year out after Hurricane Katrina. Could we handle another disaster of that magnitude?

BF: I doubt it. The problem you have is this: The people who run this federal government under George Bush think the federal government is a terrible idea. They’re not for it. They denigrate it. They want to reduce its resources. And, you know, very few of us are very good at something we hate doing.

Look, the private sector creates wealth, and that’s a very good thing. But there are also needs that you have in a civilized society that [aren’t] met by the private sector. We have to pool our resources. They’re opposed to that. They believe that when we come together in common action through the government that that’s a bad idea. They’re putting people, as I said in a speech in my district, putting these people in power even given how much they dislike the notion of government, even given their failure to appreciate the notion of government. That’s like putting me in charge of picking Miss Universe. I mean, I might be able to follow the basic rules, but my heart wouldn’t be in it.

GLT: You’re one of the greatest contributors to the GLBT political community. California recently tried to pass legislation that would add GLBT people who made contributions to the state of California’s history to the curriculum. The attempt failed. When do we get the recognition?

BF: Oh, that’s [California Senator] Sheila Kuehl’s bill. Yeah, we’ll get there. Part of the problem is that we’re talking about LGBT people who, because of the prejudices, weren’t able to be open about it. You know, I do think that when people write about Sheila, the fact that she is a lesbian is going to be written about. So I think that’s going to change in part because we are out now. Right now we’re sort of in a difficult position because we have to talk about people who were gay or lesbian and didn’t want anyone to talk about it at the time. But now, with the current generation of people, they’re going to have to censor us, and I think that’s going to break down.

GLT: You recently sponsored the Hate Crimes Prevention Act –

BF: If the Democrats take back the House, that’ll become law. Well, I take that back. It’ll pass. Bush may veto it. People need to understand how partisan LGBT rights has become. I wish this wasn’t the case. It wasn’t always that way. Before 1970, both parties were terrible. Both parties were homophobic. By the ’70s, with Stonewall, things started to change. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in 1976 were beginning to be somewhat supportive. But then [Ronald] Reagan came, and there’s been this great divergence. The Democrats have gotten better and better at LGBT rights – although we’re still not perfect – and the Republicans have gotten worse. And as long as the Republicans control the House, we’ll always be on the defensive trying to defeat bad stuff. If the Democrats take back the House, we’ll start passing good stuff. Now, it may not become law while Bush is president, but we’ll be carrying the fight to them.

GLT: It’s been two years since Massachusetts passed its marriage equality law –

BF: Two and a half.

GLT: I stand corrected. Two and a half. And the sky hasn’t fallen yet.

BF: This is a good example. Look, I’ve been involved in anti-discrimination fights on race, on gender, on disability, sexual orientation. Every time we try to do something that deals with discrimination, the opponents say, “I’m not ‘anti’ these people, but this would have a very bad effect on society.” And it never does. These things are never chaotic and disruptive.

We’re in a chicken or an egg problem with same-sex marriage. As long as we didn’t have it, a lot of people were afraid of it. There are two groups of people against same-sex marriage. The leaders – [Rep.] Marilyn Musgrave [R-Colo.], Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, that group – they really don’t like the idea that there are any gay people. And if you hate the idea that there is one of us, then you must really hate the idea of two of us hanging out. The other group, they’re just worried that the governor said this or the president said that and it’s going to be chaotic. And you have this chicken and the egg problem because people’s fear of what will happen keeps it from ever happening. But once it happens, then you can show people that the fear is unrealistic and you’re OK.

And that’s what’s happened in Massachusetts. If we had to vote on this in the legislature three years ago, it would have lost. Now, frankly, the only issue in the legislature is that – we have 200 members of the Massachusetts legislature with the House and Senate together – the only question is that will we by next year be able to keep them below 50 in opposing same-sex marriage. And I think we very well might. And if we do have a referendum – and I hope we don’t – I think the majority of people in Massachusetts will vote for it [same-sex marriage].

Because this is just as with us coming out. It’s a larger example of the coming out process. The reality beats the prejudice. The reality of who we are beats the prejudice of who they thought we were. The reality of same-sex marriage defeats the prejudice against it, because it shows that people who love each other love each other, and can be responsible together, and it has zero effect on anyone else.

GLT: Did same-sex marriage cost the Democrats elections in ’04?

BF: It had some indirect effect. But it wasn’t the Massachusetts law that did that. This is why I was critical of what [San Francisco Mayor] Gavin Newsom did. There was this period in 2004 after the Massachusetts decision when elected officials – well intentioned, but I think not thoughtful about it – said, “OK, we’re going to have same-sex marriage, too.” Oregon, upstate New York, New Mexico, California. And so people began saying, “Oh my God, it’s happening everywhere.” And the problem was this, and it goes back to what I just said. In Massachusetts, ultimately, we were OK because we could show them that the reality was something they didn’t have to worry about. And those other places, including San Francisco, what you got was some people who saw the threat without the reality.

But here’s the deal: We’re about to go into congressional elections, and everybody thinks that the Democrats are going to make gains. In the Congress, the Democrats voted overwhelmingly to kill the same-sex marriage ban amendment. Republicans voted overwhelmingly for it. Despite that, we’re still going to win more seats in November. I now believe that the main issues that cost us 2002 and 2004 were the national security issues and the way Republicans manipulated them. Because, really, while we lost in 2004, we also lost in 2002, and there was no same-sex marriage issue then.

GLT: How will same-sex marriage be handled in ’08?

BF: Well, I think it’s now clear that it’s a state-by-state issue. There was some fear – and this is part of the reason that I had some problem with what was happening in San Francisco and Oregon and other places – there was this sense that, “It’s happening everywhere and so we better stop it.” I think that now it’s clear to everybody that, in the first place, the fact that we have it in Massachusetts does not mean that any other state is going to have to have it against their will. It’s now created as a state-by-state issue, and that’s why I don’t think it will have an impact.

GLT: What is going to be George W. Bush’s legacy?

BF: Oh, I think it will be a very unfortunate one. The war in Iraq, not only was it a bad idea – and I voted against going in the first place – but I think it was the most incompetently executed American national security policy in our history. Great growth in anti-Americanism across the globe, meaning less ability for America to accomplish its goals. Domestically, a great increase in inequality in our society. Economically, and The New York Times finally picked this up, that, yeah, they talk about economic growth, but real wages are dropping. His legacy is a society that is much less fair, in which the economic distinctions sharpened to the disadvantage of most Americans, and a worsening of energy policy and an increased dependency on foreign oil because of his vigorous opposition to any sensible conservation methods.

GLT: What about the Supreme Court?

BF: Well that, unfortunately, will also be his legacy in a negative way. We’re one 85-year-old man away from losing most of the protections of individual rights that we have seen from the court in recent years. The Lawrence v. Texas decision on consenting adult sex, the abortion decision, any serious effort to deal with race. They now have four extreme right-wingers. And we have four who aren’t and one who is sort of in the middle, Justice [Anthony] Kennedy. Justice [John Paul] Stevens is 85. That’s why Democratic gains in the Senate are so important. If Justice Stevens were to become ill or die – and he’s 85 years old – and Bush could replace him, you would see a real diminution of constitutional rights and protections against discrimination.

GLT: Speaking of people who are going to leave their posts, Representative Jim Kolbe [R-Ariz.] is retiring.

BF: Yeah, he was driven out by the homophobia in the Republican Party. The Log Cabin Republicans have for years been telling us, “We’re going to make it better; we’re going to make it better.” It’s time for them to admit that they haven’t been at all successful. It’s gotten worse.

I don’t blame them for it getting worse. I blame them for not acknowledging that it’s getting worse. Five years ago, there were three openly gay Republicans holding office in Arizona. Next January, there will be zero. All driven out by Republican homophobia. Jim Kolbe, 20 years in the House, a leader in the House, he has tough primaries in which he gets less than 60 percent. That’s incredible for an incumbent to get less than 60 percent. Tom Delay got that. There’s no question that Kolbe was driven out by the homophobia in the Republican Party.

GLT: You founded the National Stonewall Democrats. How important are GLBT groups today?

BF: Well the National Stonewall [Democrats] seems to be one of the most important to me for this reason. I wish things hadn’t become so partisan, but things have become partisan. Therefore, you need an independent, lay Democratic voice. Yes, there are gay Democrats working with the Democratic [National] Committee, but they’re primarily working for the Democratic Party. The beauty of Stonewall is that it carries on two fights at the same time and they reinforce each other. I mean, Stonewall helps persuade, I hope, LGBT people that they’re much better off if the Democrats are in power, so they try to get people to vote Democratic. But they also try to persuade the Democrats to be better on the issues. And to the extent that they get more LGBT [people] to vote Democratic, the more influence they’ll have in the Democratic Party. To the extent that they have more influence on the Democratic Party, the more successful we can be in getting LGBT people to vote that way.

The other point is that it’s very important to get people in America to mobilize. Demonstrations, parades, marches – those were important 30 years ago when people didn’t know who we were. But right now, most demonstrations and marches make people feel good but don’t accomplish anything politically. The most effective organizations in America – the NRA, AARP – they aren’t demonstrations. They mobilize people to vote. And you now have a set of organizations that are much more focused on the political process, on getting our people to vote and getting our friends to vote with us, and that’s the way to win this fight.

GLT: So for ’06, are you predicting Democrats will retake the House?

BF: I’m not sure. I do think Democrats will make major gains in both the House and the Senate. Whether it’s enough to take it – I think it will be, but you never know.

GLT: So, last question… ’08. Hillary?

BF: Too early to tell.

GLT: Jeb?

BF: Bush is out of it. [Terri] Schiavo killed him. Him and [Senate Majority Leader Bill] Frist.

GLT: Barney Frank?

BF: Um, well, we’re a little bit early for that. I hope that 20 years from now it will be possible for a gay person to run for the presidency.

Congressmember Frank, along with San Diego congressional representatives Susan Davis and Bob Filner, will appear at a Rinaldi for Congress fund-raiser on Sunday, Sept. 10, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. in Mission Hills at the home of John Brannelly and Dave Ivanko..

Tickets range from $60 to $125. For reservations, directions and information, call (619) 957-6434 or e-mail vpdev@sddemoclub.org.