BOSTON, July 10, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Barney Frank, the first open homosexual to serve in Congress, got “married” to his boyfriend this weekend in a five-minute service that counted among its attendees many putatively Catholic members of Congress.
Over the weekend Frank attended a ceremony with James Ready, a carpenter and welder from Ogunquit, Maine, who is 30 years his junior. Current Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick presided over the quickie procedure at a Marriott hotel in the Boston suburb of Newton.
The event – which was closed to the media – attracted many of Frank’s colleagues from politics, several of them Catholic, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. John Kerry, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich. Other attendees included Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, Texas Democratic Congressman Al Green, and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, whose daughter recently came out of the closet.
Catholic bishops have urged the faithful to keep away from such unions, which mock the sacrament of marriage.
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Pelosi said it was fitting Frank’s ceremony fell near Independence Day, because such unions are “about expanding freedom.”
“I do think some people in Massachusetts and San Francisco think that’s what America is about,” Brian Camenker of MassResistance told LifeSiteNews.com. “For the rest of America, I think [the essence of] America is a little different.”
Camenker said the national media were falling “on top of each other to portray this as normal. This is more of the pushing the agenda on television.”
Some of the congressman’s other liaisons have been less celebrated. In 1989, Frank admitted to paying then-boyfriend Stephen Gobie, a homosexual prostitute, for sex. Gobie soon moved his business into Frank’s apartment, running a brothel that the congressman claimed not to notice. Congress ultimately reprimanded Frank for “fixing” 33 tickets for Gobie and seeking to ease the terms of Gobie’s probation.
The congressman met Ready at a 2005 fundraiser as Ready’s then-boyfriend was succumbing to a lingering illness. After the man’s death in January 2007 at the age of 73, Ready connected with Frank. The New York Times reported, “Weekends in Maine turned into Washington sleepovers.”
Ready told the media the psychological impact a homosexual “married’ Congressman would have on schoolchildren helped convince him to go through with the ceremony.
“The kids that are going to see us, and feel strong enough to be able to come out and be who they are,” he said. “That gives me more encouragement that I’m doing the right thing.”
Frank, who was elected in 1980 and became the first openly homosexual congressman in 1987, is retiring at the end of this term.
“We’re just so happy that he’s leaving,” Camenker said.