Kathie Lee Gifford’s LGBTQIA+ remarks emphasize “love” while criticizing the label

kathie lee gifford criticized the LGBTQIA+ community’s expanding set of identity letters during a conversation on Tomi Lahren’s podcast Monday. Yet, in the same exchange, she repeatedly framed her stance as grounded in Christian faith and personal relationships, insisting that love and non-judgment are central to how she approaches people whose lives she says she does not seek to direct.

Kathie Lee Gifford’s comments on Tomi Lahren’s podcast

On Monday, Kathie Lee Gifford discussed LGBTQ-related topics after Lahren asked how she reconciles being “an avid Christian” while also being “big into LGBTQ” issues. Gifford responded by centering her answer on what she described as a simple principle: “That one is a four-letter word, and it’s called L-O-V-E, love. ”

In that same conversation, she took aim at the length of the LGBTQIA+ acronym. “I don’t even know how many letters there are now, ” she said, adding, “They’ve really got to stop with that. ” The critique focused on the label itself rather than a detailed argument about policy, but it was delivered as a blunt assessment of how the community describes itself.

Gifford also described her own history in entertainment as part of her explanation. She said she has been “in this business since I started getting paid when I was 10 years old to sing, ” and added that she has had “as many or more gay friends than straight friends. ” The statement positioned personal experience and longstanding relationships as part of her basis for speaking on the issue.

The tension between “stop with that” and “not telling anybody how to live”

The record of the interview contains two parallel assertions that sit in visible tension. On one hand, Gifford’s “They’ve really got to stop with that” comment targets the community’s chosen terminology, and it is presented as a directive about how the acronym should be used. On the other hand, she explicitly said she is “not telling anybody how to live their life, ” adding, “I never have. ”

Gifford attempted to frame the boundary between those ideas by tying her position to a religious ethic rather than personal authority over others. She said, “I just know what Jesus said: Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Love God first. ” She then added, “I can’t hate anybody that I say I love. Love cannot live alongside hatred. They just don’t. ” In her telling, the core issue is not hostility toward LGBTQ people, but a conviction that love excludes hatred and that judgment is not her role.

Still, what remains unclear is where Gifford draws the line between commenting on language used by a community and what she calls “telling anybody how to live their life. ” The context does not confirm any follow-up in which she explains how she distinguishes a critique that sounds prescriptive from her claim of non-interference.

Cancel culture, Christianity, and what the context does not confirm

Beyond LGBTQIA+ terminology, Gifford also spoke broadly about public punishment and social backlash. She said cancel culture is “anti-God” and called it “horrible, ” arguing, “You can’t call yourself a believer in Jesus and then treat people like that. Jesus never canceled anybody. ” She contrasted her own religious commitment with what she described as being “canceled” over belief: “You don’t believe the way I believe, so I’m canceling you. ”

Gifford went further, warning that “Every single person that cancels other people would be canceled too by another person, ” and added, “You wanna see what that’s like? Keep it up. ” She also said she has survived public attempts to be canceled in the past, and punctuated that point with: “Try again. It ain’t gonna happen. ”

Those remarks create another open question the context does not confirm: whether Gifford sees criticism of her LGBTQIA+ comments as an example of the “cancel culture” she condemned, or as something else entirely. The material provided includes no statement linking the two directly, and it provides no response from her representative beyond the note that a request for comment was made.

If Gifford or her representative clarifies what she meant by “They’ve really got to stop with that, ” it would establish whether her critique was intended as a narrow complaint about an acronym or as a broader judgment about LGBTQ identity language, while also testing how that clarification fits with her repeated insistence that her guiding word is “love. ”