The Politics of Being Gay with Congressman Barney Frank, Eric Orner and Ann F. Lewis

Barney Frank was the first member of Congress to voluntarily acknowledge being gay in 1987. Frank joins his former congressional aide, Eric Orner, author of the new graphic novel Smahtguy: The Life and Times of Barney Frank, in conversation about growing up Jewish, his lifelong crusade for civil rights and his 30+ years in the U.S. House of Representatives. With Ann F. Lewis, a champion for women’s rights, a former White House Director of Communications, and the congressman’s sister.

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‘We, Too, Are YU’: Students March for LGBTQ Rights at Yeshiva University

“I get paid to go to YU,” said Joy Ladin, an openly transgender professor at Stern College, in her speech. “But queer students are paying to be trashed in classes to have humanity denied, to have halacha warped around values of homophobia and xenophobia and transphobia, rather than values that recognize that every kind of human being is created in the image of God.”

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Enough is Enough: Yeshiva University Students Protest LGBTQ Discrimination

Meisels described a “complete lack of LGBT representation” at YU. “If there is any discussion of LGBT individuals on campus it is always negative and always involves homophobic rhetoric,” she said. “It’s a social thing,” explained Dov Alberstone, an openly gay senior at Yeshiva College “It’s the things that people say in the dorms to each other or in the gym. In normal social interactions people have, you get a sense that being gay is the worst thing you can be.”

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