Time travelers from the AIDS era

Since starting my activist career at the young age of 25, I feel incredibly fortunate to have learned so much from many of our movement’s legendary figures, including Congressman Barney Frank. When I was just starting Outright International (then known as the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission), Herb Moses, Barney Frank’s long-time partner before her husband Jim Ready, joined the original board of directors in the early 1990s. Through Herb, I became friends with Barney and regularly stayed in his guest bedroom on Corcoran Street when I came to Washington for work. We went out to dinner at their favorite Chinese restaurant and Bernie gave me advocacy advice. His tough love style expressed his love and respect for me as a similarly argumentative Jew.

We worked together to organize a trip to Russia in 1992 for a group of individual donors, including Fred Hochberg (years before he became president of our Export-Import Bank), Andy Tobias (before his time as DNC treasurer), Terry Watanabe (one of the few major donors to the queer movement at the time), and Vic Bashir (who was running the Victory Fund at the time). Bernie was able to conduct high-level meetings with Russian officials that would never have been possible without him, including conversations with the Ministry of Justice regarding the then-infamous Section 121 of the Penal Code, which aggressively punished private gay sex. A year later, this law was removed, resulting in most copycat versions being created in other former Soviet states as well. While Bernie organized a reception for our group at the US ambassador’s residence in Moscow, I organized a visit to a local prison to meet with gay prisoners. It was a crazy time and produced some great stories as well as some important lessons from Barney Frank.

Lesson #1: Be precise with your evidence.

Bernie always asked tough questions of the activists I brought into his office, demanding concrete evidence of the persecution claims we were trying to expose. His precision sometimes felt like a challenge to the truth of the matter, but it made me a much better human rights activist in my early years. He pushed me to be more rigorous. It allowed us to better articulate why the experiences of LGBTQ people around the world are important to share with policymakers and our communities.

Lesson #2: Read More

On the plane to Russia, Barney showed up with a duffel bag full of newspapers and periodicals he hadn’t finished reading. He hates small talk and spent the entire flight reading and catching up. Even though we now have access to the internet on planes, what I’ve learned is to stay informed and read books.

Bernie was very concerned about immigration issues in the United States, and we worked together to open the U.S. asylum system to LGBTQ individuals who had a credible fear of persecution based on “membership of a particular social group” (though at the time we only called it sexual orientation). This category is one of five legal reasons why the United States is obligated to provide asylum. We focused on then-Attorney General Janet Reno and asked her to take up the case of Marcelo Tenorio from Brazil. The IGLHRC helped document and win the case a year ago as part of the Asylum Project, which assists immigration lawyers with documents from around the world for people who are persecuted for being gay. (Remember before the internet!). In June 1994, Attorney General Reno issued a binding memorandum elevating the case to a precedent-setting case, and from that moment on, the definition of “member of a specified social group” for asylum seekers included homosexuals in the United States. This milestone clears the way for tens of thousands of LGBTQ asylum seekers to flee persecution and start a safer life in the United States. This legal milestone is currently under attack.

Lesson #3: Appreciate your champions.

A week after Reno issued the official attorney general’s order, I was on the phone with Bernie and he asked me if I had sent her a thank you letter yet. I had to admit that it wasn’t. A terrifying moment that I will never forget. In the pre-internet days, I immediately wrote a letter of protest. But we still didn’t understand the importance of writing a thank-you letter to our political targets (or allies) when they actually do what we asked them to do.

Bernie served on the International Advisory Board with over 30 other incredible leaders from around the world, including Radical Fairies founder Harry Hay. They couldn’t be more different types of gay men. But I took them to Russia and earned their respect. At a complex time in our movement’s history, I was a spokesperson for the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA). ILGA was an international membership association of gay organizations from around the world and was the only major organization active worldwide at the time. ILGA had submitted a controversial application to become an official UN observer as a non-governmental organization. The truth is that ILGA, as a broad membership organization, had an actual pedophile ring in its membership at the time. As OutRight (then IGLHRC) was ILGA’s “activities office”, I spearheaded a campaign to create membership standards that excluded NAMBLA and two other similar Dutch organizations that rejected the distinction between 2-year-olds and 16-year-olds. Together with then-board members Judith Butler and Alex Chasin, we carefully crafted Outright’s nuanced position: affirming the right of children to explore their sexuality while opposing abuse of power and sexual exploitation by adults. We lost both Barney and Harry with that comment, and I had to make a difficult call.

Lesson #4: Don’t give up on rejection.

Bernie explained to me that he could not be associated with any position or organization that was connected in any way to the issue of pedophilia, but he did not reject my personal or organizational activities. All we needed to do was remove his name from our advisory board. I was still devastated, but that didn’t stop me from pursuing more nuanced distinctions between consensual sex and exploitation (e.g., elevating the Dutch model of allowing each partner’s consent within two years during the complicated years leading up to emancipation, rather than the unfair system that allows 18-year-olds having sex with 17-year-olds to be charged with rape).

Lesson #5: Principle-based pragmatism

I started OutRight when I was 25 years old. I remember Bernie telling me one night in 1992 that if I wanted to come and work on The Hill, I could do just fine in Washington, DC. He complemented my drive to find concrete, progressive steps towards equality while understanding my deep passion for justice and full equality. On the other hand, I was passionate about building organizations and making LGBTQ and HIV issues part of the larger human rights movement. But I held on to that supplement for a long time, and it guided my work for many years.

While I appreciated his compliment at the time and have had a successful career bringing about incremental change, today I fear that the era of “incrementalism” is over in the United States. Despite Bernie’s last book and his last effort to hold on to liberal institutionalist hope for democracy, this moment calls for progressives to fundamentally reshape this unjust system. This is not the time for us to back down or rally behind Democrats who are unwilling to stand for far better things. It’s time to boldly envision, name, and work for the better country and world we desperately need. It’s debatable whether Bernie was being politically pragmatic or selling out the trans community when he removed gender identity from a draft bill he tried to pass in 2007. This caused a huge split in community support for the bill, and when it failed to pass two years later, he brought it back into the bill. meeting Just to this day It has never passed basic non-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Now that Congressman Frank has passed away, we believe the time has come to realize the worldview of Urvashi Vaid, another monumental advocate we lost last year. Her vision was one of a more interconnected liberation of all of our nation’s people, rather than one identity group at a time. What do we have to lose by demanding a holistic vision of liberation when we are rapidly regressing this into authoritarianism?

The last time I saw Bernie was a few years ago, he was signing books at a local LGBT event in San Francisco. He seemed really happy to see me and welcomed me with a big hug. As we reflect and mourn his passing, we are so grateful to have had the incomparable Congressman Barney Frank to guide us during our early leadership years.

Julie Dorff is co-chair of the World Council for Equality.