The Catholic Church merely has an image problem on LGBT equality, according to Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
"Well, I think maybe we've been outmarketed sometimes," he said on Meet the Press, according to a preview of the Sunday interview reported by the Associated Press. "We've been caricatured as being antigay."
Dolan was one of the most prominent figures to battle passage of marriage equality in 2011 in New York. He even posted a letter to his website comparing legalizing same-sex marriage to Communist regimes.
"Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America -- not in China or North Korea," he wrote at the time. "In those countries, government presumes daily to 'redefine' rights, relationships, values, and natural law. There, communiques from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of 'family' and 'marriage' means."
Now Pope Francis has been making the case that Catholics shouldn't spend so much time focusing on the lives of gays and lesbians. And Dolan tells NBC's David Gregory that the church "is not 'anti-anybody,'" it's just that proponents of marriage equality have made it seem that way.
"When you have forces like Hollywood, when you have forces like politicians, when you have forces like some opinion-molders that are behind it, it's a tough battle," he said.
Watch the complete interview on Sunday's Meet the Press.