Former Rep. Barney Frank’s death on the advent of Pride Month has resurrected for me the tragedy that fell upon my father, Marshall, the night he dared to stand beside Barney.
On July 26, 1990, the US House of Representatives voted to reprimand Barney Frank for being gay.
That’s not the entirety of the story: Barney was dumb in love and reckless and had stepped in to fix more than 30 parking tickets for his younger male lover, who happened to be a prostitute. But had Barney’s much younger lover been a woman, this would never have come to a vote on the House floor. It’s hard to remember now, but America in 1990 was still coming to terms with gayness.
The whole Affaire du Frank was sad and unseemly, but relevant to me mostly because I was my father’s maitre d’.
Marshall loved nothing more than throwing a party, filling his big old house in Pittsburgh with 100 people and music and laughter and food and drink. Since I had been a small child, it had been my job to greet them, to take coats, to answer the phone, and generally keep the party rolling. By 1990 I was post-college and living in DC, but my father and I remained best friends and co-conspirators, and I would still hop on a Greyhound to Pittsburgh when he needed help with a big party.
My father had come out to me when I was a teenager, but he was still only half-out in Pittsburgh. His straight friends mostly knew, but since he had students from all over the world, he thought it best not to be out at work. Somehow he managed to occasionally have 100 queers over for a barn-burner party and still occupy this weird grey area of being not-really-all-the-way-out.
But he had been dipping his toes into deeper waters. Marshall helped found TRI-PAC, the first effort by Pittsburgh gays and lesbians to pool their money for political influence. And they had planned a big event to flex their muscle: a fundraiser with Rep. Barney Frank, one of only two openly gay members of Congress at the time.
They had scheduled the event months in advance, with no way of knowing that the party — on July 29, 1990 — would be Barney’s first public appearance after being reprimanded on the floor of the House. And of course the party was to be held at Marshall’s house.
Given all the national news around Barney, local reporters were asking to cover the party. Marshall wanted a press release but didn’t want to declare this a “gay” event — he wanted this to be about liberals gathering to support a staunch supporter of liberal causes. I had already begun my career as a reporter in DC, so I helped him draft a release focusing on Barney’s support for civil rights, abortion rights, his opposition to the B-2 bomber, and gay rights.
A little before 5pm, as the party was kicking off, TV news crews gathered on our front lawn. Barney told my father, “Screw them. You don’t have to talk to them.” But Marshall, as he always said, was a lover not a fighter, and he never wanted anyone to feel unwelcome. So he invited the cameras in.
They did a brief interview with Barney — useless, because Barney’s answer to everything was essentially, “That’s a stupid question.” So they turned to Marshall. I was whispering in my father’s ear: “Remember! Abortion; B-2 bomber; civil rights!” But he was a terrible prevaricator. When asked why he was hosting the party, he answered with some version of “abortion, B-2 bomber, and OF COURSE WE ARE GAY AND WE STAND WITH BARNEY.”
The camera crews were gone by 5:15. At 6pm, the TV news led with: Local gays celebrate disgraced Congressman Barney Frank. The party crowd gave a cheer.
Within seconds the phone rang.
“Singer residence,” I said, as always.
“Is that faggot Jew bastard at your house?” the caller demanded.
I felt like I had been punched in the chest. I hung up.
It instantly rang again.
“Singer residence.”
“You cocksucker perverts,” a different voice growled.
I hung up again.
It rang again.
“You disgusting queers — I should come over there and kick your faggot ass.”
This time I had a response ready. “Get a life, you pathetic asshole.”
When it rang again, I answered only long enough to hang it up and leave it off the hook for the rest of the night.
I took my father aside. “It turns out, Marshall, that there are still people in Pittsburgh who have nothing better to do than look up our number and call us to shout obscenities because you are gay.”
He sighed and hugged me. “And what part of this surprises you?”
The party was a big success, and was covered in the local paper the next day. But the hate calls continued. One repeat caller was leaving increasingly violent threats about what he planned to do to my father with a baseball bat or a gun. So Marshall finally called the cops.
They listened to the messages and said there was nothing they could do. “You should install a security system.”
That was heartbreaking to my father. He loved his house, loved sharing it, loved welcoming people — friends, strangers, strays who had been kicked out of their own family homes — with open arms and a warm smile. He did not want his sanctuary to become a fortress. But for the first time he no longer felt safe there.
It was a very sad day when the workers came to install his new security system.
A few weeks later, my father was traveling and unreachable — this is all before cell phones — and my office phone rang. It was the security company: the alarm was going off at 1520 Shady Ave, they couldn’t reach Marshall, and I was listed as the other authorized user. The police had found nothing suspicious, but they needed my authorization to shut it off. Could I give them the password?
I had no idea.
“I can give you a hint,” the dispatcher said. “It’s a four-letter word.”
The lightbulb went on. I knew immediately what password my father would set on an alarm system he had been forced to install to protect himself against a torrent of slobbering hate.
“Try L-O-V-E,” I said.
“That’s it, Mr. Singer. We’ll disarm the system. Thank you and have a good day.”
My father spent his whole life disarming with love.