Nancy Pelosi, in a fit of satanic pride, accuses Bishop of engaging in "venom masquerading as virtue"

Carla Marinucci, writing for SFGate, reports: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi took the lead this week in a high-profile lobbying effort to pressure San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone not to attend the controversial March for Marriage event, which she characterized as "venom masquerading as virtue." Pelosi, who is one of the country's most powerful Catholic politicians, made a passionate appeal to the archbishop in a letter obtained by The Chronicle not to participate in the National Organization for Marriage's June 19 march on the Supreme Court in Washington. Cordileone, who is one of the featured speakers at the event, was a leader in the campaign for Proposition 8, the 2008 California anti-gay-marriage initiative.

"We share our love of the Catholic faith and our city of San Francisco," Pelosi wrote to Cordileone, who, as head of the 560,000-member Archdiocese of San Francisco, has become the Catholic bishops' point man against gay marriage. She urged him to abandon an event in which some of the participants show "disdain and hate towards LGBT persons.

Invoking the words of Pope Francis with regard to gays and lesbians, she wrote, "If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?"

The goal of the second annual March for Marriage is to draw thousands of supporters of what they call "traditional marriage" to walk from the U.S Capitol to the Supreme Court. Conservative former presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, as well as Cordileone, are being billed as the star speakers.

The San Francisco Democratic leader is the most influential in a parade of public figures who have come forward to protest the San Francisco archbishop's participation in an event that is also backed by the Family Research Council. Critics have called the organizers "hate groups" that are targeting gays and lesbians.

Last week, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, along with a host of Bay Area religious leaders, sent a joint letter to Cordileone protesting his plans to attend the march.

Some 20,000 people have signed an online petition by Faithful America demanding that the archbishop cancel his appearance.

The event comes at a time when same-sex marriage is increasingly common and polls show that public opinion - once widely opposed - has dramatically shifted in recent years. The most recent Gallup poll shows public support for gay marriage at 55 percent, an all-time high.

Cordileone has nevertheless become a national leader in the religious movement against gay marriage. He heads the Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage for the politically powerful U.S. Conference of Bishops and was instrumental in raising $1.5 million to get Prop. 8, which banned same-sex marriage, on the California ballot in 2008.

The measure has since been ruled unconstitutional, allowing same-sex marriages to be performed in California.

But Cordileone has remained outspoken in his opposition to gay marriage, saying, "The ultimate attack of the evil one is the attack on marriage."

Public officials, including Pelosi, have expressed respect for the archbishop's religious views, but have taken particular issue with the organizations sponsoring and participating in the event.

The Family Research Council has been labeled an antigay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. It "blamed gay marriage for the recent shootings at Isla Vista," the Faithful America petition notes.

 In 2011, the president of the National Organization for Marriage wrote that gay marriage would "normalize pedophilia," and the organization has also linked gay marriage with incest.

"We ask that you will reconsider your participation and join us in seeking to promote reconciliation rather than division and hatred," Newsom, Lee and dozens of others wrote in their letter to Cordileone.

Their protest characterized the event as "organized by some of the nation's most virulently anti-LGBT organizations and leaders."

Pelosi, in her letter, told Cordileone, "While we may disagree on the subject of marriage equality, we do agree that every person is a child of God, possessed of the spark of divinity and worthy of respect."

Cordileone has publicly defended next week's March for Marriage as "an important means to promote and defend marriage for the good of our culture, to pray for our federal and state governments, and to stand in solidarity with people of good will."

In a letter defending the event, he said, "This is a critical time for marriage in our country, as marriage amendments are being struck down by federal courts and appeals of these decisions are being made."

Since a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in support of same-sex couples, gay marriage has been declared legal in 19 states and the District of Columbia.

Pelosi is living proof that sin nmakes one stupid.  Having engaged for many years in sinful dissent from the Church's teaching, she an no longer discern the truth which has been recvealed by Jesus Christ and authoritatively interpreted by the Church's Magisterium.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its Instruction entitled "Considerations Regarding Proposals To Give Legal Recognition To Unions Between Homosexual Persons," has this to say in nos. 2-4:

"The Church's teaching on marriage and on the complementarity of the sexes reiterates a truth that is evident to right reason and recognized as such by all the major cultures of the world. Marriage is not just any relationship between human beings. It was established by the Creator with its own nature, essential properties and purpose. No ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman, who by mutual personal gift, proper and exclusive to themselves, tend toward the communion of their persons. In this way, they mutually perfect each other, in order to cooperate with God in the procreation and upbringing of new human lives.

The natural truth about marriage was confirmed by the Revelation contained in the biblical accounts of creation, an expression also of the original human wisdom, in which the voice of nature itself is heard. There are three fundamental elements of the Creator's plan for marriage, as narrated in the Book of Genesis.

In the first place, man, the image of God, was created "male and female" (Gen 1:27). Men and women are equal as persons and complementary as male and female. Sexuality is something that pertains to the physical-biological realm and has also been raised to a new level — the personal level — where nature and spirit are united.

Marriage is instituted by the Creator as a form of life in which a communion of persons is realized involving the use of the sexual faculty. "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh" (Gen 2:24).

Third, God has willed to give the union of man and woman a special participation in his work of creation. Thus, he blessed the man and the woman with the words "Be fruitful and multiply" (Gen 1:28). Therefore, in the Creator's plan, sexual complementarity and fruitfulness belong to the very nature of marriage.

Furthermore, the marital union of man and woman has been elevated by Christ to the dignity of a sacrament. The Church teaches that Christian marriage is an efficacious sign of the covenant between Christ and the Church (cf. Eph 5:32). This Christian meaning of marriage, far from diminishing the profoundly human value of the marital union between man and woman, confirms and strengthens it (cf. Mt 19:3-12; Mk 10:6-9).

There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts "close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved."

And in an Instruction entitled "Some Considerations Concerning The Response To Legislative Proposals On The Non-Discrimination Of Homosexual Persons," issued on July 22, 1992, the CDF had this to say: "'Sexual orientation' does not constitute a quality comparable to race, ethnic background, etc. in respect to non-discrimination. Unlike these, homosexual orientation is an objective disorder and evokes moral concern." (No. 10). And again: "Including 'homosexual orientation' among the considerations on the basis of which it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead to regarding homosexuality as a positive source of human rights, for example, in respect to so-called affirmative action or preferential treatment in hiring practices. This is all the more deleterious since there is no right to homosexuality which therefore should not form the basis for judicial claims. The passage from the recognition of homosexuality as a factor on which basis it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead, if not automatically, to the legislative protection and promotion of homosexuality. A person's homosexuality would be invoked in opposition to alleged discrimination, and thus the exercise of rights would be defended precisely via the affirmation of the homosexual condition instead of in terms of a violation of basic human rights." (No. 13).