SUNDAY SHOWS

Barney Frank Won't Invite Obama to His Wedding, Citing Secret Service

Updated: May 20, 2012 | 3:30 p.m.
May 20, 2012 | 11:59 a.m.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., will marry his partner in July, but there's one person he's not including on the guest list: President Obama.

"If he and his wife wanted to come, I would be delighted and honored to have them. But he will bring the Secret Service," Frank said on C-SPAN's Newsmakers on Sunday, adding that "it would ruin the party to have the Secret Service" there.

"I don't want to be accused of having shut down the entire region for a five mile radius on a holiday weekend," he said.

Frank, who is gay, has loudly praised Obama's statement in support of gay marriage just a few weeks back. But Obama's security requirements are apparently a bit too much for the famously acerbic congressman, who took office in 1980 and has announced that he will seek reelection when his term ends in 2013.

"I'm not critical of [the Secret Service], but they can go take their layered protection of the president somewhere else. Not to my party," he said.

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