By Ann Rostow—
Okay Boomer
Former Senator Barney Frank, who died of congestive heart failure on May 19, 2026, gave an interview to The New York Times shortly before his passing in which he decried the Democratic Party for insisting on a suicidal political correctness. Unlike the fight for trans rights, Frank said the gay rights movement started with attainable goals like ending state bans on sodomy, while carefully leaving same-sex marriage for last. He also said the goals of the gay rights movement have been achieved, and reminded readers of his pragmatic fight to keep transgendered men and women out of the text of the ridiculous “Employment Discrimination Act.”
Ridiculous is my personal interpretation of that mindless attempt to legislate a limited niche of gay job protections that would never have passed the Congress of two decades ago and would have done next to nothing if it had. Yes, keeping trans people out of the bill made the Employment Nondiscrimination Act more palatable, just as removing anchovies from a kale and mud blender shake might make the drink go down easier. Meanwhile, it served as a talking point for the Human Rights Campaign’s fundraising efforts for years. Don’t get me started on this!
Frank, who was a courageous gay rights hero, employed the irritating habit of looking back over the years and reimagining the gay movement as a linear, consensus-driven plan through an orderly check list of strategic civil rights goals. In fact, the fight for gay rights was holistic, driven, among other things, by changes in society after AIDS, the increasing visibility of regular gay and lesbian people throughout culture, and, above all, by a comprehensive set of legal goals. If there were coordinated leaders in the effort, those weren’t the politicians but the lawyers—and same-sex marriage was a major focus for decades.
Furthermore, unlike the complicated fights for transgender rights, which involve completely separate issues like military service, health care, sports, bathrooms, ID cards, and so forth, the gay rights movement was based on the idea that gays and lesbians were normal people, with jobs and families—your neighbors, if you will. It was a comparatively straightforward fight against discrimination.
To Frank, the issue of transgender athletes was comparable to the issue of same-sex marriage and should be relegated to the final stages of the trans rights movement, because, by implication, it’s the hardest thing. But first, if we must be ranking, many people might put military service, prison conditions, or youth health care ahead of sports. And second, as I just implied, these are fundamentally unconnected subjects with their own internal conflicts. Should kids get puberty blockers? When? Who decides? What are the medical implications? Should transgirls play sports? At what age? At what level? Should transgender men and women participate in the military? Why not? Is there any reason qualified transgender Americans should not be able to serve their country? Much of these issues involve plain old discrimination, just as with gay rights. But many have their own entanglements that can’t be untied without thought and effort.
Finally, I’m reminded of a conversation I had with my mother in 2004. She was a distinguished professor of American history and presidential politics. One morning she was basically berating me and my community for allowing the subject of same-sex marriage to undermine John Kerry’s effort to win the election. But, (as I said to her at the time), since when is my community to blame for making same-sex marriage an election issue? We’d been working towards marriage equality for a long time, and, because we’d made progress, the Republicans latched onto marriage as a source of money and easy sound bites. Did she think some powerful cabal of gay leaders just thought of marriage equality recently and decided to take a noisy political stand? Did Barney Frank really think the Democratic Party decided to put transgender rights at the top of their agenda?
As I said, it’s irritating. And I won that particular argument.
As Maine Goes
Barney Frank went on to accuse Democrats of going over the top, not just on transgender rights, but on a number of progressive causes. Why demand Medicare for all, he asked, when lowering the Medicare age from 65 to 60 would be easier and of great help? Yes, his simplistic comments on gay and trans rights annoyed me, but he was not the first one to correctly point out that Democrats moved too far to the left for the electorate, allowing Republicans to characterize them as socialist dreamers unfit to govern.
But it wasn’t just our progressive views that hurt us in elections. It was our inability to sidestep Republican talking points; it was our fearful Democratic candidates worried about saying the wrong thing; it was our lack of clear-cut policies aimed at the average voter. It’s possible to advocate for universal healthcare and also call for the Medicare age to go down to 60 (under a plan that contains financing and logistics for success). Likewise, we don’t need to step away from transgender rights in order to focus on the top priorities for a party platform. Americans are beaten down by the cost of living, housing, education, health, and childcare. These five areas alone should take up most of a presidential campaign, with foreign policy along with them. That doesn’t mean abandoning transgender rights. It means putting them in perspective for a statewide or national audience. It means telling the American people that trans bashing, along with any attack on civil rights, does absolutely nothing to improve your daily life.
Above all, we need authentic candidates with the courage to speak plainly. Frank went out of his way to name Graham Platner, our presumed candidate for Senate in Maine, as a kind of rogue actor on the political stage. Like Talarico in Texas and Pete Buttigieg, Platner doesn’t hesitate to cut through focus group-tested soundbites and talk directly to the voters. I don’t care if he had a Nazi-adjacent tattoo back when he was in combat. But what I really like is his ability to move the discussion past that 30-second “gotcha” without beating around the bush, and continue on. It’s significant, as well, that Platner was beating Governor Janet King by 20 or 30 points before the King dropped out of the primary race the other day. King is pushing 80, and, despite her name recognition and popularity, the Maine polls indicate that Boomers have had their day.
Relentless Attacks on Trans Kids
I’d like to move to a journalistic amuse bouche, or rather (since we’re mid-column) a trou Normande, the little shot of Calvados in the middle of a long lunch in Deauville. But we must force ourselves to consider the Department of Justice’s recent efforts to subpoena hospitals for the full medical records of minor transgender patients. These ongoing attempts to punish medical groups, violate privacy, and abort ongoing treatments have been blocked by seven different judges, according to Chris Geidner’s LawDork report.
Now, the DOJ has abandoned these administrative subpoenas and is getting grand juries from a conservative district court district out of North Texas to issue subpoenas to hospitals around the country, which are then rubber stamped by Judge Reed O’Connor with little chance for rebuttal. The Kafkaesque litigation that we are now seeing is beyond even Geidner’s ability to explain to me, a critique not of Geidner, but of yours truly.
You may remember that I gushed in the last issue about the permanent injunction issued against Robert Kennedy’s anti-trans “Declaration,” which had been used by the Department of Health and Human Services as a basis to threaten funding for hospitals that offered gender health services to minors. But, as we’ve seen under Trump, when one avenue is blocked, the administration detours to another route towards the goal, in this instance, of denying any kind of transgender health treatment for minors.
You may also remember that the High Court ruled Tennessee had the right to ban health care for transgender kids last year. But that ruling just allowed red states to pursue their anti-trans policies. It did not mandate an end to such health care in blue states (like New York and Rhode Island, which are among the DOJ targets). Recently, a state court in Kansas struck down a new anti-trans health care law, based on the state constitution’s protection of parental rights. After all, the fight for transgender kids—whether they can take puberty blockers or whether teens can get hormones—involves parents as well as kids. These are parents who are trying to do their best for their children who are not just “questioning” their gender as many might, but who are truly struggling as puberty approaches or takes hold.
And here’s the interesting aspect of this in my view: last year, the Supreme Court deliberately declined to review whether or not Tennessee’s law violated parental rights. Instead, their opinion in June of last year was based solely on Equal Protection, ruling that the gay kids were not being treated differently than cisgender kids, who were allowed to use hormones and the like for, well, cisgender problems. John Roberts, (if I recall correctly without resorting to tedious research), also said the discrimination in the Tennessee statute was based on age not gender—so, hey! You can get puberty blockers when you’re 18; just have a little patience.
In Kansas, the litigation is in the state court and based on the state constitution, so the Tennessee precedent does not apply. But, even if it reached the federal courts, the Tennessee precedent would still not apply because, while parental rights were indeed appealed to the High Court, the Court chose not to examine them. Parental rights are embedded in the Constitution as part of the Due Process Clause, the same right to privacy and autonomy that gave us Roe v Wade and all our gay rights victories under Justice Kennedy. When you’re dealing with minor kids, as we are here, surely the constitutional rights of parents must be taken into account. I don’t know the Kansas Constitution from jack cheese but most state constitutions draw their authority and logic from the federal version, so I assume the same is true in my adopted state.
Go Jayhawks. My Kansan wife thinks they will rule college basketball next season, although she is frequently optimistic on this matter. Kansas was 17th last time I checked, while my team (Texas) was 11th. Just sayin’.
En Fin
Among the stories I’ve left to the end, I’ve got another anti-GLBT episode in Russia, the death of openly gay former NBA player Jason Collins (who sounds like a really nice guy and died of a brain tumor), and an episode involving Rand Paul’s son, William, who got drunk in a D.C. bar and told a GOP member of Congress that he hates Jews and gays.
“Last night, I had too much to drink and said some things that don’t represent who I really am. I’m sorry and today I am seeking help for my drinking problem,” he posted later.
But my favorite story concerns an animated movie now playing at the Cannes Film Festival that involves a virus, “Heterosis,” that turns gay men straight. In the movie, Jim Queen, Jim Parfait is an influencer who loses his followers when he contracts the illness. His one friend sticks by him, and, according to The Hollywood Reporter, “the odd couple must go on a wild ride in the French capital and its Marais district, the beating heart of the city’s queer scene, in the hunt for a rumored cure to not only heal Jim, but also save the LGBTQIA+ community from extinction.” Woah, Nelly!
I’ve been remiss on my gay male show watching these days. As I mentioned in a previous column, I watched an episode of Heated Rivalry, but wasn’t in the mood for it, even though it seemed good. Then, on the advice of my dear friend JR, I watched a couple episodes of Half Man. Again, it seemed like a really good show, but I can’t take that level of violence late at night. Maybe I’ll try the next four episodes first thing in the morning over coffee and a shot of Calvados, which I’ve been yearning for ever since I started the third section of this column.
GLBT Fortnight in Review
Published on May 21, 2026
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