Dying Barney Frank Criticizes Transgender Men in Women’s Sports

Give former Rep. Barney Frank some credit, he knows how to get attention. There are only so many former controversial politicians who launch book tours while entering hospice. And former Rep. Frank is not only doing that, he’s attacking his own movement for going too far and becoming extremists.

Former Sen. Barney Frank (D-MA) delivered some stern warnings to fellow progressives as he enters his final days in hospice care due to congestive heart failure.

“It’s precisely because I have been on the left that I have undertaken this,” Frank told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “Many of us fought to get inequality on the Democratic agenda.”

“But the problem was, as we succeeded in bringing the mainstream of the left into a concern with inequality, we also enabled people who wanted to use that as a platform for a wide range of social and cultural changes, some of which the public isn’t ready for.”

“You are a Progressive icon, but now you are expressing some reservations about where the Progressive movement has gone,” CNN’s Tapper said.

Frank said Progressives were making a crucial mistake on culturally sensitive issues like transgender people in sports, by “taking the most controversial parts of the agenda and turning them into litmus tests.”

“Obviously, I’ve been working for gay rights — started in 1972 when I filed the bill, and we in the movement to established fairness for gay and lesbian and bisexual people,” Frank said, continuing:

“We picked to work on those issues, which were more acceptable. We didn’t get to marriage until after these other things had been resolved. And that’s what I’m suggesting that we do today. The analog is male to female transsexuals playing sports that are for women. I understand a lot of anger about that. And I think in the interest of the transgender community as well as others, it would be better to go at that in a more granular way and not simply announce that if you don’t support it, you’re a homophobe.”

Or, more to the point, announcing that the female sex no longer exists. And anyone who disagrees is causing mass transgender suicides.

There’s a whole lot of coverage in the media about Frank ‘trailblazing gay icon’ entering hospice. A lot fewer reports about what he’s actually saying. And when the book comes out, I suspect they’ll do their best to ignore it. But when Barney Frank, of all people, is telling Dems that the Left is out of control, they should be listening.