Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn.

My guest this week is the former congressman from Massachusetts, Barney Frank.

Back in 1987, he became the first member of the house to voluntarily come out as gay.

Some of his colleagues in congress thought he was making mistake.

I went to the hospital and he heard about it.

He was then the speaker and he told one of his friends that I was, he liked me, but I

was all through in politics.

Barney Frank's all through in politics.

So the guy was Mike Barnacle and asked him, why?

He said, well, I think he's going to come out of the room.

But after I came out overwhelming, he said, you know what, you're better at the job now.

There was an anger, there was an emotional tightness that went away and I was in the job

where being able to get along with being boys important.

It's Bullseye.

Coming up, we'll hear my conversation with Barney Frank about his new member, Frank.

He'll tell me why he loved the craft of politics, but hated campaigning, how you can give

any political member a Washington read.

A why he didn't read is you go to the index and look for your name and then you look

at him.

And I always do that.

I can tell you by the way that almost every book on American politics mentioned Spend

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