Why Barney Frank won’t invite Obamas to wedding

Barney Frank, the first openly gay member of the US House of Representatives, is getting married this summer but he will not be inviting the first president in history to endorse same-sex marriage to the ceremony.

The Massachusetts congressman is marrying his longtime partner Jim Ready and explains to C-SPAN why President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama did not make the guest list.

‘If he and Michelle wanted to come, I would be delighted and honored to have him, but he will bring the Secret Service,’ Frank said. ‘I would be flattered to have the president do that, but it would ruin the party to have the Secret Service.’

‘I’m not critical of them,’ he added, ‘but they can go take their layered protection of the president somewhere else. Not to my party.’

Frank is 71 and Ready is 42. He told Charlie Rose in a January interview that he is ‘in love for the first time in my life.’