The retiring Democrat Congressman Barney Frank has said that gay rights campaigners were wrong to take a case about equal marriage to the Supreme Court.

Mr Frank has married his partner Jim Ready in Massachusetts.

Mr Frank who represents Massachusetts’s 4th district and was first the congressman to voluntarily declare being gay, as well as being the first congressman to have a same-sex marriage while in office.

Earlier this month, the US Supreme Court agreed to take up California’s ban on same-sex marriage, a case that could give the justices the chance to rule on whether gay Americans have the same constitutional right to marry as heterosexuals.

Today in an interview with the Huffington Post, he said: “I was critical of the decision to take Prop 8 to court.”

“I don’t the think the five-member Supreme Court majority that we have is ready to declare that there is a constitutional right to marry everywhere.

“To bring a lawsuit when you’re not likely to win it, prematurely, is a mistake. So I was very critical of those people in California who were doing that.

“When the Supreme Court decides the Prop 8 case, what I believe is likely to happen is that they will accept the decision by of the circuit court in the west coast [ the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which had narrowed the decision to apply only to California].

“It’s people being rescued from themselves. Some of them are still trying to push the broader case, which I think is a mistake.”