JoJo Siwa Knew She'd 'Never' Be Able to 'Change' Candace Cameron Bure After 'Traditional Marriage' Comments

"I wish she was able to be a little more open, a little more accepting," Siwa shared, adding, "I'm OK with calling her out in the way that I did"

Candace Cameron-Bure, JoJo Siwa
Candace Cameron-Bure, JoJo Siwa. Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty; Todd Owyoung/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty

JoJo Siwa has come to terms with the admiration she's lost for Cameron Candace Bure

A few months after getting embroiled in a public disagreement with the Full House star last year, the 20-year-old Dance Moms alum was ready to put the feud to bed — and then Bure, 47, made headlines with controversial comments about "traditional marriage."

Bure made the remarks while promoting her role as chief creative officer for the conservative-leaning Great American Family channel, telling The Wall Street Journal that the network planned to keep "traditional marriage" — i.e. between a man and a woman — "at the core" of its programming.

Siwa — who is pansexual — objected to the nature of Bure’s choice of words. 

“It was that she [wanted] to do a movie about that to put down [the] LGBTQIA [community] and that she was going to specifically make movies that had no representation of LGBTQIA,” she explained to Nick Viall, 42, on his Viall Files podcast.

“It’s fine if you are doing it because it’s just your movie’s storyline and it’s just it is what it is, like, not everything needs to be gay essentially," Siwa added. "But when you’re doing it out of spite to say that, ‘Too much is about LGBTQIA and you guys suck and I want to make a movie about traditional marriage and you’re not traditional,’ that got to me a little bit.”

JoJo Siwa at the Can't Cancel Pride event
Wes and Alex

In November 2022, shortly after stars began to speak out against Bure's remarks, she shared a statement to Instagram, claiming that she loved “fiercely and indiscriminately” and had no intentions of offending anyone with her comments. 

“I am a devoted Christian. Which means that I believe that every human being bears the image of God,” she wrote at the time. “Because of that, I am called to love all people, and I do. If you know me, you know that I am a person who loves fiercely and indiscriminately. My heart yearns to build bridges and bring people one step closer to God, to love others well, and to simply be a reflection of God’s huge love for all of us.”

Candice Cameron Bure visits Build Studio on November 22, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Steven Ferdman/Getty Images); JoJo Siwa attends iHeartRadio 102.7 KIIS FM's Jingle Ball 2021 presented by Capital One at The Forum on December 03, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for iHeartRadio)
Steven Ferdman/Getty; Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty

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Shocked by Bure’s statement, Siwa released her own, calling Bure’s comments “rude and hurtful to a whole community of people."

“After reading [the article], it gave me a little sense of, ‘OK, you and her are never going to agree, you and her are never going to be friends [or] get along,” the Dance Moms alum said to Viall. “I’m never going to be able to change her, she’s not gonna be able to change me, we can both just live life.”

Siwa noted, “But I wish she was able to be a little more open, a little more accepting. I’m OK with calling her out in the way that I did.”

“[The LBGTQIA+ community are] my people, I gotta stand up for [them],” she continued, adding that Bure’s comments were “messed up” and implied that those in the LBGTQIA+ community could not also be “good, loving Christians.”

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