Frankly speaking

Now, he tells us. Barney Frank will leave an indelible mark on American politics. The former congressman, now 86, served more than three decades in the House of Representatives, representing the liberal fourth district of Massachusetts. An unabashed liberal from the start, he became the first member of Congress to come out of the closet as homosexual, or at least the first to do so voluntarily.

He has been a major leader on the political left, and his moral progressivism came fully into view when, as a young Massachusetts state legislator, Frank attempted to legalize “sex work” but restrict it to Boston’s “Combat Zone”—local lingo for the red-light district. Eventually, Barney Frank would also become the first member of Congress to marry someone of the same sex, James Ready.

Mr. Frank is now facing death as he lives with Ready in their home in Maine. As Frank told CNN’s Jake Tapper in a recent interview, his long struggle with congestive heart failure is coming to an end. And yet, even under hospice care, the former representative is eager to share advice with the Democratic Party and his fellow progressives. As Jenna Russell of The New York Times explains, based on her own interview with the former representative, Barney Frank “is also offering his fellow Democrats some parting thoughts on what he thinks they need to do to win again.”

He doesn’t expect to be alive when the book is released in the fall, so he is talking about it now. Even as his frame is extremely frail, his voice is clear and his advice is simple—don’t push the American people to the left extreme until they are ready to go there. That’s the essence of his advice to the Democrats and his fellow liberals. Just slow down a bit, and you will win in the end.

In making his case for a more strategic method that will eventually produce leftist wins, Frank pointed with urgency to the lessons learned by the gay rights movement, of which he was very much a part.

“When we were fighting for gay rights—a fight I think we have essentially won—we knew that some issues were more popular than others,” he explains. “So we tended to start by trying to win the ones that were most popular. Gays in the military. Employment. We didn’t go after same-sex marriage, we didn’t make marriage a litmus test, until the very end.”

Christians and others trying to understand the astounding moral and cultural changes of the past few decades need to look closely at Barney Frank’s explanation. He lets the cat out of the bag. He says the quiet part out loud.

In his telling, the key to reaching truly revolutionary goals, like the entire LGBTQ agenda, is starting where people can be moved, and holding back on your ultimate goals. Right out loud he admits that when the American people were not ready to accept same-sex marriage, which he admits was a goal all along, the agenda was explained as just about fairness in the military or in employment.

He then states, in his own words, that the left did not make support for same-sex marriage a litmus test until the very end. There it is. All along, it was just a matter of timing. Barney Frank and the leaders of the LGBTQ movement knew exactly what they were doing. The American people blinded themselves to what was obvious.

But note also that he admits support for same-sex marriage should now be a litmus test—his own term—for the Democratic Party. His comments are remarkably candid, even as many of us saw through the charade all along.

What comes next is even more important. Frank tells the political left, the Democratic Party, and his fellow LGBTQ activists that the current issue they need to shut up about is boys on girls’ sports teams and in girls’ locker rooms.

In his words: “I analogize that to male-to-female sports. That’s the most controversial part of the agenda—the equivalent of same-sex marriage—so put it at the end. If you go at it that way, you build support for it. But if you insist on the most controversial parts all at once, you make it harder.”

Look closely at what Barney Frank is telling us. We overhear him advising the political left and the moral revolutionaries to go slow on the males-to-females in sports. Go slow on the locker rooms, restrooms, and sports teams. Push all that now, and it hurts the movement. Make those issues a litmus test now and you risk the whole project. Shut up about pushing biological males into female spaces until the American people are ready. Focus on other things that seem “fair,” and keep your eyes on the prize.

Once again, note that Barney Frank wants the entire LGBTQ agenda to be enacted into law and made a future litmus test for the Democratic Party ... just be quiet about it now.

Christians must notice the structure of his argument and be ready to confront the real argument behind it. We believe that this moral issue—the reality that boys cannot be girls and that girls cannot be boys and that boy bodies should not be allowed in girls’ locker rooms—is a matter of objective truth, and not merely a question of political policy.

Barney Frank wants all that transgender activists demand to happen but advises the leftists that they just bide their time, at least for a while. Interestingly, younger insiders in the LGBTQ movement are furious with the former congressman and want to move on with the push for the full list of transgender and nonbinary demands.

For the rest of us, Barney Frank’s comments are a chilling lesson in how the moral revolutionaries have won. Coming as his life comes to a close, his argument comes with tremendous moral weight. He clearly believes what he says. The CNN interview is hard to watch, but Christians had better pay attention to what Barney Frank had to say. He spoke frankly, and we had better take his words seriously.