Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi attacked San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone Thursday, calling him an “extreme” opponent of the LGBTQ community.
“How can I say this nicely? There’s just no way. We’ve had very, very negative anti-LGBTQ stuff coming from our archbishop and others,” Ms. Pelosi said during an event at Georgetown University’s Center on Faith and Justice:
Archbishop Cordileone “was responsible for putting on the ballot Proposition 8 because he had all this conservative money that put this on the ballot, something about marriage. I’m not exactly sure what it was, but we got rid of it later,” she continued, in reference to a 2008 ballot measure that sought to amend the California Constitution to define marriage as being between one man and one woman.
Moreover, Cordileone leads “every parade against women honoring their own sense of responsibility or LGBTQ,” she added in reference to the prelate’s participation in the March for Marriage and the pro-life Walk for Life West Coast.
Pelosi went on to conclude that the archbishop’s support for unborn life and man-woman marriage suggests he wants to exclude some people from the kingdom of God.
“And so he’s made it very clear: Maybe we’re not all God’s children. Maybe we do not have a free will,” Pelosi declared.
“Right now, our challenge are trans kids,” she asserted, “that in certain states they will arrest you if you try to meet the needs of your trans child, the health needs; they call that child abuse,” she stated regarding laws banning the use of puberty blockers and sex transition surgery on minors.
“Yeah, and some of it is stirred up by the more conservative leaders in the Church,” she added:
In the course of the discussion, Pelosi also took issue with Cordileone’s position on abortion.
“Yeah, I had a problem with my archbishop, well, the archbishop of the city I represent. But I figure that’s his problem, not mine, because I had five children in six years,” she said.
Growing up in a devoutly Catholic family, “it was always about helping other people that we had that responsibility as a matter of our faith,” she stated.
“We were always, always, always told that you had to treat people with great respect, that we’re all God’s children and whatever our differences are, we have to be treated with respect and that there’s that spark of divinity in every person,” she said.
Asked what goes into the formation of Nancy Pelosi’s conscience, she replied, “We have a free will. God has given us a free will, and we have a moral responsibility to live up to that free will and what it gives us.
“I was raised in a family that you would describe as pro-life, although I think I’m pro-life because I care about children and the rest. Nonetheless, that was kind of their thing. I mean, they weren’t rallying in the streets, but that’s who they were… are.”
But I would say, ‘Mom, you said this is a matter of free will, and people have a responsibility to live up to their responsibilities.’”
“I go to the one issue because everything else we’re pretty much in sync when it talks about the social compact of the Catholic bishops and the rest,” she said, “but they are willing to abandon the bulk of it because of one thing. And that’s the fight that we have.”