Barney Frank on Aaron Schock's Departure :: 'He Was Outed Or What?'

On Tuesday afternoon Barney Frank was asked of Illinois congressman Aaron Schock's resignation from a Business Insider reporter.

It turned out was the first he heard of the 31-year old's sudden announcement and his response pointed to an elephant in the room.

"He was outed or what?" he told reporter Hunter Walker.

Frank had come to Business Insider's DC headquarters to discuss his new book "Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage," but first was asked about the congressman's troubles.

"When Frank was informed that Schock's resignation stemmed from questions over his use of campaign and taxpayer funds, he noted that the congressman was reported to have improperly accepted money in order to take a male companion on one of his foreign trips.

"'Wasn't it [that] he took somebody with him?' Frank asked. 'I thought he also traveled with one particular staffer,' the Business Insider report continued.

Though Frank acknowledged the rumors, which led Out Magazine to write that Schock is "believed to be working in a glass closet on Capitol Hill," he didn't know if they were true.

But also felt that Schock didn't have a right to privacy due to his anti-gay votes in Congress.

"'I will say this, I don't know if he's gay or not. But if he is, he's forfeited any right to privacy because he votes anti-gay,'" Frank said of Schock. "'My view is that people who are gay who vote to support the right of other people to do it have a right to privacy, but the right to privacy does not include hypocrisy.'"

According to the Advocate: "Schock has been a vocal opponent of LGBT equality since he entered Congress in 2009. He received a 0 percent rating from the Human Rights Campaign in his first term, during which he voted against including sexual orientation in federal hate-crimes legislation and opposed efforts to repeal of the military's ban on out LGB service members known as 'don't ask, don't tell.' He was also a vocal critic of the Obama administration's decision to stop defending the so-called Defense of Marriage Act in February 2011. "

As for Schock's so-called "Downton Abbey" decorating tastes, Frank was confused.

"The one thing that puzzled me, the New York Times had a story about how he redecorated his office to look like 'Downton Abbey,' but all I saw were pictures of like Ulysses S. Grant. It's obviously sort of disjunctive in my mind. There were all these pictures of Republican presidents. I don't know what they were doing in 'Downton Abbey.' I suppose you could say, from a certain angle, Herbert Hoover does look a little bit like Maggie Smith depending on the light, but nobody could have been Ulysses S. Grant."

Frank also feels now that's he out of Congress, he should come out of the closet.

"Of course he should," Frank said.

As for Schock's six-pack abs that the congressman self-promoted on many occasions in Instagram, Frank concluded:

'Yeah, if they're (the rumors) true, and I don't know that they are. I have to say, if they're not true, he spent entirely too much time in the gym for a straight man."