From hospice, Barney Frank urges Democrats to rethink trans rights approach

Former Massachusetts U.S. Rep. Barney Frank is confronting the end of his life with the same bluntness that defined his decades in Congress.

Speaking from hospice care and appearing unwell in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday, the Democrat said he is living with end-stage heart failure. “I’ve felt better. On the other hand, I anticipate feeling worse,” he said. “After 86 years, my heart’s just wearing out.”

Frank, with a characteristic aside about whether he’d rather be remembered as “an icon or an emoji,” said his critique comes from within the left, not outside it. He argued that mainstream Democrats were slow to take economic inequality seriously, and that progressives were right to force the issue onto the party’s agenda. But he said that success also created a new problem. Some advocates, he suggested, used that momentum to push a broader set of social and cultural changes faster than the public was prepared to accept.

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“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,” he said.

While not explicitly questioning the legitimacy of trans people in public life, Frank said he had concerns about how some of the most politically volatile debates, especially sports, are being discussed.

“The analog is male-to-female transsexuals playing sports designated for women,” Frank said, using language that many advocates now consider outdated. He added that “in the interest of the transgender community, as well as others, it could 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,” he said.

Even when he agrees with those goals, Frank said, strategy matters. He pointed to the history of the gay rights movement, noting that advocates pursued more broadly accepted protections before turning to marriage equality. That sequencing, he argued, helped build the public support needed for lasting change. Applying that logic to current debates, he cited transgender rights as an example of an issue that may require a more incremental approach and warned against framing disagreement as inherently rooted in bias.

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Since returning to office in 2025, President Donald Trump has signed executive actions narrowing federal recognition of gender, sought to restrict gender-affirming care for minors, banned transgender people from the military, and backed policies barring transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports.

For transgender Americans, the debate is not abstract. Access to gender-affirming care, participation in school and public life, and even the ability to be recognized under federal law have become central battlegrounds, as Republican-led policies and legal challenges reshape the landscape. Advocates warn that these fights carry real consequences for safety, health, and civil rights, particularly for transgender youth.

Public opinion on transgender participation in sports remains sharply divided and, in many cases, skeptical of inclusion. A 2025 Gallup poll found 69 percent of Americans say transgender athletes should compete based on their sex assigned at birth, compared with about 24 percent who support participation based on gender identity. The divide is particularly stark along party lines, with about 90 percent of Republicans backing birth-sex restrictions, compared with roughly 41 to 45 percent of Democrats.

However, public sentiment on transgender issues has not aligned with Republican messaging. A January Fox News poll found voters trust Democrats more than Republicans on the issue by roughly 22 points

Months earlier, when he appeared alongside California U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters at a PFLAG National event in Washington, D.C., Frank explained his approach to governing.

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There, Frank presented Waters with the group’s Champion of Justice award in November and praised what he described as a decades-long effort to bridge constituencies rather than divide them. He pointed to “the failure of efforts by advocates of either variety of bigotry to drive a wedge between the Black and LGBTQ+ communities,” adding that “no one deserves more credit for this than Maxine Waters.”

As the first voluntarily out gay members of Congress, Frank helped move LGBTQ+ rights from the political margins into the mainstream. Progress, he argued, did not come all at once but in stages, with advocates building public support before advancing more contentious demands.

“Obviously, I’ve been working for gay rights stuff since 1972,” he said.

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Tapper asked Frank what he would want young people to take away from his life and work. Frank responded by pushing back on what he described as growing anxiety among LGBTQ+ people that their rights are on the verge of being rolled back.

“There’s a lot of angst among other gay and lesbian people. ‘Oh, we’re going to lose our rights. They’re going to take things away,’” he said. “My answer is no.” He pointed to the dramatic shift since 1980, when there were no federal protections for gay people and even policies that penalized them, arguing that the arc of progress demonstrates the system’s capacity to expand rights over time.

Frank said those gains did not come from bipartisan consensus or protest alone, but from a combination of visibility and political engagement. LGBTQ+ people coming out helped change public understanding, he said, while advocates also worked to embed equality within the Democratic Party’s broader human rights agenda.

“I want younger people, all people, to understand that a political majority can get things done more than people think,” he said.