As one of her last acts as Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declared a bill foisting same-sex marriage on all 50 states reflects “the divinity” inside every human being, then praised the memory of a homosexual-identifying pedophile. She and her fellow Democratic colleagues then derided “the forces of hate” that oppose same-sex marriage.
The retiring Speaker’s remarks came during final debate in favor of the so-called “Respect for Marriage” Act, which passed the House Thursday. The bill would overrule state laws and force every state to recognize any marriage contracted in any other state.
By forcing Americans to support homosexual unions, Pelosi said on the House floor, “we stand up for the values that the vast majority of Americans hold dear: a belief in the dignity, beauty, and divinity — divinity — spark of divinity in every person, and abiding respect for love so powerful that it binds two people together.”
The Book of Romans says homosexual relations indicate the individuals “exchanged the glory of the immortal God” for a “debased mind” (Romans 1:18-33). The Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, condemns homosexuality as sinful.
Skeptics might also question Pelosi’s assertion that same-sex marriage binds “two people together.” Surveys indicate about half of all male same-sex couples enter their relationship with no expectation of sexual monogamy; the other half will have an open relationship in an average of 6.6 years, according to a study conducted by a same-sex couple. The original draft of the bill, which critics call the “Disrespect for Marriage” Act, did not prohibit polygamy. Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) attributed this to a “drafting error,” which required a Senate amendment. But Heritage Foundation expert Roger Severino said the revised version does not adequately safeguard marriage as the union of only two people. LGBTQ activists have long said they hope polyamory or polygamy will “infect the straight world” and “radically alter” or abolish the institution of marriage.
Pelosi then named a pederast as the bill’s patron. The bill represents “freedom,” Pelosi said, and “when we talk about freedom, I often think of Harvey Milk.” Milk, a San Francisco Democrat, had a sexual relationship with Jack Galen McKinley, a 16-year-old runaway who committed suicide after their encounter. Milk was attracted to “boyish-looking men in their late teens and early 20s,” wrote LGBT activist Randy Shilts in his biography of Milk, his friend. “Harvey always had a penchant for young waifs with substance-abuse problems.” Aside from Pelosi’s praise, former President Barack Obama honored Milk with a Presidential Medal of Freedom, a postage stamp, and a U.S. naval ship.
Pelosi also savaged Christians as hatemongers and attacked Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who asked his fellow justices to reconsider the 2015 Supreme Court decision that first discovered the constitutional “right” to same-sex marriage, Obergefell v. Hodges. “While his legal reasoning is twisted and unsound, we must take Justice Thomas at his word, and the hateful movement behind him at their word,” said Pelosi on Thursday morning. Passing the “Respect for Marriage” Act, which would allow LGBT activists to sue Christian business owners and threaten religious nonprofit ministries, would “combat bigoted extremism,” said Pelosi.
Other Democrats piled on the invective. “An extremist Supreme Court, hateful state legislatures want to roll back the hard-won progress that we have made,” thundered Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the socialist-leaning Congressional Progressive Caucus, on the House floor Thursday. Openly homosexual-identifying Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) insisted, “We will not leave it to the forces of hate and the relics of the past to be the final word on the fate of love.”
Despite the allegations, most congressional Republicans opposed the bill because it would restrict the free exercise of religion, a right guaranteed by the Constitution. Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), who attended his son’s wedding to another man in July, said “the bill lacks the appropriate constitutional protections for religious liberties enshrined in the First Amendment.” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), who favors same-sex marriage and voted for the original version of the bill in July, accused congressional Democrats of “failing to provide legitimate safeguards for faith-based organizations.”
Pelosi and others said the bill would be necessary to safeguard same-sex couples from conservative justices. Yet Justice Amy Coney Barrett diminished the likelihood of rehearing Obergefell during her 2020 confirmation hearings, saying, lower courts would likely “shut such a lawsuit down, and it wouldn’t make its way up to the Supreme Court.”
H.R. 8404 also protected interracial marriages, a right recognized by the Supreme Court in 1967’s Loving v. Virginia case. Interracial marriage faces no threat in any state, nor was the Loving case cited in the concurrence of Justice Thomas, who is married to a white woman.
It was not the first time Pelosi used religious terminology to support behavior condemned by the Bible. In May 2012, Pelosi declared, “My religion compels me” to support same-sex marriage, “and I love it for it.” Three years earlier, the future Pope Francis called same-sex marriage “a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.”
Pelosi, who calls herself “an ardent, practicing Catholic,” has also called abortion “sacred ground.”
Photo: WTTW News
Ben Johnson/Family Research Council