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发帖数: 2153 | 1 The first US Congressman to come out voluntarily as gay has confirmed he
plans to marry his partner of five years.Barney Frank, considered the most
prominent gay politician in the US, has sat in the House of Representatives
in Washington DC for over thirty years, political blog The Hill reported
yesterday.
His office confirmed the wedding between Frank and parter Jim Ready, 42,
will take place in Massachusetts, Frank’s home state.Frank, 71, first stood
for national office in 1980 after the incumbent priest resigned following
Pope John Paul II’s instruction that priests should not hold political
office. His campaign slogan was “Neatness Isn’t Everything”.
He previously worked as an aide to Boston’s mayor and, at the state level,
as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.Ready has a small
crafts business in Maine making custom awnings, among other products.Frank
came out in 1987. He told the Washington Post the decision to make his
sexuality public had been prompted by the death of Stewart McKinney, a
bisexual Republican representative.He said there had been “an unfortunate
debate about ‘Was he or wasn’t he? Didn’t he or did he?’ I said to
myself, I don’t want that to happen to me.”Gerry Studds was the first
Congressman to be publicly known to be gay; he had been forced to come out
as part of a 1983 investigation into a relationship with a 17 year old
congressional page. Frank was the first US Congressman to come out
voluntarily.He admitted using private income to pay a male prostitute, Steve
Gobie, who went on to live in his Capitol Hill home in the 1980s.When the
relationship was made public by Gobie in 1989, Frank asked to be
investigated by the House Ethic Committee and was reprimanded for fixing
Gobie’s parking tickets.Frank and Ready met in 2005 but reportedly began
seeing each other romantically in 2007. A date for the wedding has not been
set, but if it were to occur before Frank’s term ends in 2013, he would be
the first sitting member of Congress to enter into a gay marriage.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/01/27/first-us-congressman-to-co |
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