Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 796 | Former Lesbian Activist Calls “Soft” Christians to Repentance | Guest: Rosaria Butterfield

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

Today we're joined by Rosaria Butterfield to hear her amazing testimony of how she found Christ after years of living in sin. She shares her story of coming to Christ, from being raised by secular Catholics, to coming out as a lesbian and becoming an esteemed feminist academic, to finally being saved and dedicating her life to God. We also talk about a recent article Rosaria wrote in which she publicly repented for engaging in "pronoun hospitality," the idea that affirming someone's chosen identity is a good way to gain someone's trust before sharing the Gospel with him. Rosaria explains why this isn't correct and offers a fresh perspective on why it's actually sinful for Christians to be supportive of "tolerant" or "inclusive" policies around marriage. We end with Rosaria's thoughts on how to stay connected with friends and family who do things like use preferred pronouns, without affirming something that isn't true; her advice to Christians who are struggling with believing they are gay or transgender; and how to navigate these situations in a biblical way. You can pre-order Rosaria's new book here: https://amzn.to/3VbKtye --- Timecodes: (01:22) Rosaria's testimony (12:13) Sanctification & leaving the homosexual lifestyle (24:00) What the Bible says about sexuality and marriage (28:54) Post-Obergefell world (40:28) Preferred pronouns --- Today's Sponsors: Birch Gold — protect your future with gold. Text 'ALLIE' to 989898 for a free, zero obligation info kit on diversifying and protecting your savings with gold. Epic Will — be intentional about your family, your values and your wishes. Go to EpicWill.com/ALLIE and you’ll save 10% on your complete Will package. My Patriot Supply — prepare yourself for anything with long-term emergency food storage. Get $200 of survival gear when you buy a Three-Month Emergency Food Kit when you go to PrepareWithAllie.com. Constitution Wealth — align your values with your investments through your financial management. Go to ConstitutionWealth.com/ALLIE and schedule a FREE consultation! --- Links: reformation21: "Why I no longer use Transgender Pronouns—and Why You shouldn’t, either." https://www.reformation21.org/blog/why-i-no-longer-use-transgender-pronouns-and-why-you-shouldnt-either --- Relevant Episodes: Ep 782 | 'Pronoun Hospitality' Is Sin: Rosaria Butterfield’s Confession https://apple.co/40CJCYx Ep 335 | Understanding the Biblical Telos of Gender https://apple.co/421XxbD --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'MOM10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.

Rosaria Butterfield is a former feminist, left-wing, lesbian activist professor who is saved by Christ a couple decades ago and has since been sharing her testimony and the freedom that she has found in Christ. She recently just published an article talking about the sin of using quote unquote preferred pronouns for people who identify as transgender. This was a practice that she once took part in in the name of Christian empathy, but now has realized that it's a sin. Wow, she has so much to teach us today, not just about her own testimony, her story of how Christ saved her and the kind of evangelism that was so effective for her and her own. life, but also how we as Christians can stand really strong in the spiritual battle of this age. Oh, my goodness, you are going to love this conversation and be so encouraged and empowered. That's just what the gospel does. And she is an amazing vessel of that gospel.

This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Go to Go to Ranchers.com. Use code Allie at checkout. That's good ranchers.com. Code Allie. Rosaria, thank you so much for joining us. I think most people listening to this have read your books. They know your story or they've read your articles.

They've at least familiarized themselves with your testimony. But there are some people out there who don't know. So if we could kind of start from the beginning and you could at least give us a refresher on your testimony and how you came to do what you do now. Okay, great. Well, you don't want me to start from the beginning because I'm 61 years old. and we would be here for a lot longer than 45 minutes. Oh, that's perfectly fine. I'm sure it's all very interesting.

Well, I'll get to the good stuff. Yes. When I was 28 years old, I came out as a lesbian feminist activist. I had been really struggling with, I guess, what we would call same-sex attraction for at least, I guess, a decade before that. Although I had dated men and was just sort of waiting to get zapped. and find my balance. But that never did happen.

So I became pretty radicalized in college and then graduate school and decided at 28 that I should just, you know, come clean and call myself a lesbian. And so that the next decade was filled really with serially monogamous lesbian relationships. But in addition to that, I was a professor. I was a professor at Syracuse University of English and Women's Studies. I was recruited and mentored and then tenured to launch a queer theory program. And I became one of the first crop of Tier 1 Research University's gathering of tenured radicals. So I wasn't just a lesbian next door.

It was my job to really make homosexuality look wholesome. And I did my best to do that. And then in the process of writing my post-tenurembergian, your book, which was basically on the religious right. And my genuine question was, why do people like you hate people like me? That was the people, the person I used to be. That was the genuine question. And so I started working on that book. And in the process of working on that book, I met a pastor and a neighbor. His name is Ken Smith. He is still alive. He's in his 90s. And he and his wife just shared the gospel with me, not once, not twice, but probably over 500 meals.

And I genuinely wanted to know why they believed what they did. And so I'm an English professor. I needed to read the Bible. And I knew that. And so under Ken Smith tutelage, I read the Bible. I read it through seven times. And that's a lot of times. That gives the Holy Spirit a lot of bandwidth in a person's life.

And so during those, the two years that I was really studying and reading, I came to the conclusion that I could not write this book and that Jesus was real and true and risen and that that would be true whether I believed it or not. And so that was really the beginning of my undoing as a lesbian act of the, activist professor, but also my remaking as a godly woman and a Christian. And so I wasn't zapped. I don't know what to say. I mean, it wasn't like I committed my life to Christ and then woke up the next day and said, oh, I should have had a V8. Everything's different. No, I mean, sanctification is slow and hard and painful. But it's also real and true. And so I am one of

that earlier generation of Christians who can tell you that I came to Christ and praise me to God, I'm no longer gay. And those seem to be hate words these days or hate some kind of a hateful speech these days. But it's simply true. Yes. And there's a lot that I want to ask you about that period of sanctification because I know there are people who are listening to this who are either in your generation, my generation, or younger, who do they hear that?

And maybe they're even Christians. And they're thinking, that's impossible. You can't ever stop being gay. That's just authentic to who you are. Your attractions cannot change. The best that you can do is just kind of be celibate. And so they're listening to you. They want to believe what you have to say,

but they're having a hard time wrapping their minds around it. So before we kind of get into that, because I know this is going to be relatable for so many people. And we joked about not going to the very beginning, but I am interested in kind of just a little bit about your upbringing, how you came to it, you know, at 28 years old, say, I'm not just a lesbian, but I'm basically a queer theory activist. I'm going to live my life this way. And a time when that wasn't quite as mainstream and rewarded by the mainstream as it is today. I mean, did you grow up in a religious background? What was that like? What set the stage for that? Sure. Well, my name is Rosaria. So I'm named after the rosary. So I was raised in a secular Roman Catholic family. And I went to Catholic schools throughout. My dad would drop me off at school. And he'd say, remember two things. Do not get in trouble with the nuns. Do everything they say and don't believe a word they say.

Wow. Wow. I was raised by secular rationalists. My parents were strong defenders of Planned Parenthood. And I talk a little bit about that in all of my books, but especially the book that's coming out in September. So definitely I was a religious skeptic who had enough, I guess, Catholic training to understand some of the vocabulary. But I guess the secularism kind of won itself over ultimately.

You didn't really have any kind of theological foundation. So when you decided that you were going to come out as a lesbian, was there any kind of moral wrestling that you had? Were you worried about telling your parents or if you would be accepted or anything like that? Well, you know, I probably should have been. I probably should have been. But actually, when I came out as a lesbian to my family, that was less threatening than when I came out as a Christian. And so I think that that might be a little hard to really track with, but my family's liberal and feminist worldviews and commitments made it so that they weren't a blank slate and I wasn't a blank slate.

I believed what I believed because I believed that that was morally right, not because it was some kind of an affliction and I just couldn't help myself. No, I actually believed that what I was proclaiming was true and right and good and virtuous. Hey, this is Steve Deast. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos.

If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this Steve Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. told your parents, your parents kind of were just like, okay, not that big of a deal. And so you quickly found acceptance and celebration within the academic community, correct? Do you think that was part of what made you or what motivated you to be so public and so activist-minded that there were kind of rewards and accolades that accompanied this identity? Well, that could be. I'm not sure that in the 90s there are quite as many accolades.

But, you know, I mean, you know, my undoing has always been that I'm a chief speaker, right? I mean, so that's how I always get myself into these pickles, you know. You know, I had a little stick-a-on-my desk that said I'd rather be, you know, wrong on an important point than right on a trivial one. And in some ways, I've just always really lived my life like that. But there is no question that in the 90s, especially at the universities where I was at, there was a strong core of feminist activist. And I was one of those. And it really did give me, you know, a team and a cause, if you will.

Right. So let's fast forward to you kind of explained the in between and then sanctification. As you described it, it's not like you woke up one day and you were fully sanctified and you decided, great, I'm not a lesbian anymore. I'm going to just move forward in this life with Christ. There was a process of letting go. I imagine that one of the most difficult things that you let go of, one of them, was a life of homosexuality. And you were with a committed partner at the time, right? Absolutely, absolutely. She was a professor also. So we had a core group of people. We called them our family of choice. And we were grownups. I was in my 30s. She was in her 40s. When we broke up, we didn't have a spider plant and a folding chair table to, you know, to separate. We had, we had, I had, I had, I had. I had. I had. I had. I had. I had. I had. I had. I had. I had. I had. I had. I had. I had. I had. I had. I had. I had. I had. I had. I had. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I people who depended upon me. I had graduate students who depended upon me. And when I came to Christ, I betrayed a lot of people. And I really did. I mean, can you imagine how horrific it would be to be one of my lesbian feminist graduate students writing a dissertation in queer theory? And I become a committed Christian. You know, that truly would ruin your life and your career. And so

that's true and I did that to people. Yeah. And tell me about that specific point of sanctification. You've written about this before, actually in a response article to Jen Hatmaker a few years ago saying that, sure, you can be gay and be a Christian. And you talk about how you kind of wrestled with that after you became a Christian, after you believed in the gospel, you wanted to think, yes, I can be a gay Christian. Yes, I can have my partner and have Christ. too. Tell me about that wrestling. What was that like? You know, well, first of all, the wrestling should be really obvious to anybody, that whatever it is we like and we do and is so normal and natural to us that we can't really separate ourselves from it. It's really hard to see that through the lens of Christ. It's hard to see that as a vestige of original sin.

because we normalize it and we can think of all the ways that we've done good in the world and all those kinds of things. And so I think the first challenge for every single Christian is to use the Bible as our lens for to separate out what is part of our image bearing of a holy God, part of our creational design and what is part of the world, the flesh and the devil. So the only way to distinguish those two is to use the Bible. If I use my feeling, I'm going to get messed up on all kinds of things, not just homosexuality. So that's the first order of business. The second order of business then is to actually believe that the Bible knows me better than I know myself. And that Jesus has something better for me than what I think is true. And then the third part is to learn, and this is again, not not specifically.

to homosexuality. This is for every single Christian on planet Earth to learn how to hate your sin without hating yourself. And every Christian I know has to get up every morning and drive a new nail, fresh nail, into our choice sin every day. And if you actually do that, the power of the resurrection is yours to have victory over your sin. Now, are you lobotomized? No, not actually. Not at all. And at any moment, any of us could backslide and fall into whatever sins are, you know, that know us really well and that we know really well. But that's where we realize that prayer doesn't mean you ask the Holy Spirit to do your job. See, prayer isn't, Lord, you know, pray the gay away. Just, zap me, take it over. No, that's not it at all. Prayer is, Lord, put the tools in my hands and help me to mortify this sin. Help me to kill it, to hate it, to defy it, and to grow in your grace. And, you know, there is absolutely no way that you can call yourself a gay Christian and do that. You can't put your

sin on life support and kill it at the same time. And that's where the subject of homosexuality does need to be looked at through a particular lens. Not because it's such a special sin. It's a garden variety sin, just like you know, you've got garden variety spliders. That's all it is. But it's probably the only one that has civil rights protection.

And so for that reason, many, many evangelical Christians are really torn right now about how to protect. seed forward. And that's where we just have to be bold and clear and not muddled and ambiguous and really quite, you know, foolish. So as an academic who became a Christian, were you met with some of the same arguments about Christianity and homosexuality that we are today? You've probably heard some of them. Well, the word homosexuality was added into the Bible later. Well, if you dig into it, it's really talking about pedophilia or it's talking about prostitution or the Old Testament,

sure, it says that, but it says lots of other things too. Were you confronted with those kinds of things when you were trying to figure this out? Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that's always been my challenge. You know, some people become fairly proficient swimmers by being thrown into the deep end and providentially flapping around in such a way that allows them to survive. That doesn't necessarily mean they should be a swim coach. And in some ways, that's a good analogy for how it's always been for me.

I've really always been confronted with extremely challenging questions. But by God's grace, I've also been part of a denomination with pastors and elders who have been able to really equip me to work through these questions. Those are good questions, and they actually have good biblical answers. And so a lot of it has to do with if you believe there are any problem passages in the Bible. In other words, do you believe the Bible was actually given to us? God breathed, transcribed by chosen men, inspired by the Holy Spirit, so that we could have everything we need for faith in life.

Or do you believe that there are some real problems in here? It's not really sufficient. It's not really inerrant. It's not really inspired. And sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. If that's what you believe, which I think is a foolish way to go about, you know, why even be a Christian if you're going to believe that your Bible can't see you through and your Lord's salvation is not sufficient.

I mean, I don't even understand why you'd want to be a Christian at that point, but that's a different story. If you see that the Old Testament and the New Testament, in fact, are so deeply connected because our God is one God, not to God, that there are no problem passages in the Bible. if you can see and appreciate that, then you can hold on, that you can have confidence, and you can learn how to wait on the Lord as you are fighting your sin. And you can learn this fine art of Christian maturity as you grow in sanctification.

And I think those are really important things. But I also was, and I guess I still am, a 19th century scholar. And these ideas about sexual orientation as a category of personhood were ideas that came of age out of German romanticism and Freudianism and were part of the 19th century. And so anybody who studies the history of ideas, as anybody with a PhD would, would know, well, these are not really ancient ideas. This idea that sexual orientation is who you are, not how you are, is about 150 years old. Right. It's not like it, oh, you know, back there when we made the pyramids, this idea was there. Not at all. And so even as a gay rights activist, my community was very suspicious of some of these ideas about sexual orientation. Now, in my generation, we were suspicious about it because it was consistent.

considered an illness. And we wanted you to know that gay is good. We weren't sick and we didn't need your cure. But the same, you know, the same issue is at stake here. So my generation, actually, we understood our homosexuality through the lens of a, at that point, iconic lesbian poet named Adrian Rich, who wrote a fairly seminal article called compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence. So many of us came to our lesbianism out of heterosexual relationships. And we viewed those heterosexual relationships as compulsory through a societal lens and therefore not, you know, in some ways authentic. That makes sense. Yep. There's so many things in what she said that I want to respond to and ask questions about. But one thing that you said is that really kind of

Some of those difficult questions and good questions that people have about what does the Bible really have to say about sexuality in marriage. They really do go back to fundamentally what you think, as you said, about the Bible, but also not just that about God himself. Do you believe that he is authoritative? Do you believe that he is loving? Do you believe that he is trustworthy? Then that will determine how we read the Bible. We don't just read the Bible saying, well, what can we get away with? what does the Bible specifically say that we cannot do and can we somehow exclude those verses to see

how sinful we can really be and still be a Christian? We also look to the Bible because we love God and he loves us and say, but what does God say to do? What does he say is good and holy and pleasing to him? And we see only one type of sexual relationship positively defined, spiritually defined, eternally defined. And that's marriage between a man and a woman. So I think you're absolutely right, that it really is about a lens. Yes, those questions are good, but they speak to something, I think, more fundamental about someone's faith and how they view God. But my, I guess my attachment to that or my building off of that is how then you kind of changed your mentality from one of not just skepticism, but really a dislike of Christians thinking that they hated you to, realizing, oh, God is loving. Christians can be extremely loving. You talked about Ken Smith. How did you go

from that skepticism and maybe antipathy towards Christianity, towards realizing, wow, God actually wants what is good for me. What did that look like? Right. Right, right. Well, one of the things that we would say in the Reform Presbyterian Church is that the Bible is a unified biblical revelation. So the Old Testament is not somehow lesser than the New Testament. It's law and gospel. It's not one or the other. And, you know, I would say that the seeds of the gospel are in the garden. And so that was just part of the, you know, the reform Presbyterian church. And so here were my, these people who were who were in my life now. And I was hearing that fairly constantly. but I would say a real breakthrough moment for me was sitting at Ken Smith's table probably for the 500th time.

I don't know, right? And after, you know, after a meal, we would, we would sing a song. And then Ken would read from the Bible and we would discuss it. And we were singing from Psalm 23. And I remember, you know, I was sitting there thinking, you know, oh, poor me, I am the only lesbian here. You know, I am all alone and these people are my enemies and they don't believe in gay rights and they don't, you know, and we're singing through the song. And I'm doing this kind of pity party. And then we get to this line, you know, about dining in the presence of my enemies.

And I don't know. It was really a, it was a scary moment for an English professor. English professors like to be right about reading things, right? We like to think we know how to read books. So it was a really bizarre moment for me to realize, I actually was reading this whole psalm from the entirely wrong point of view. These people were not my enemy. I was theirs.

And furthermore, I was Christ's enemy. But then to make it all the more disarming, these people love me. and I think that was the real turning point for me. Now, I'd love to tell you that I just dropped to my knees and committed my life to Christ and it was all, that's not what happened. I fought for about a year after that. But that was a turning point in the way I was thinking about things. I realized that in some ways, they were my friends, but I was their enemy.

And I was their enemy because I was Christ's enemy. But they loved me anyway. And so I would say I came of age under a disciplining ministry that understood you're not actually supposed to pretend that your enemies are your friends. You're supposed to do something harder. You're to love them. And I was a recipient of that kind of radical Christian love. And how did these people kind of balance with you truth telling about sin and salvation?

and just friendship and kindness and hospitality, were they constantly intertwined? Did they come up at different times? Or what was that like? Well, it was a different world. So I think that we need to understand that a post-Abergafel world has different rules attached to it

because the Aburgafell decision, 2015 Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage had embedded in it something called the dignitary harm clause. And the dignitary harm clause says, if you deny my LGBTQ plus minus, et cetera, et cetera, dignity, that's, you know, that's harm. Now, in my generation, you know, if you didn't sell me a pizza that was harm, if I go in and you're, you know, you're a pizza owner and you're supposed to sell me a pizza and you don't sell me a pizza because I'm queer, well, I just want my pizza. That was, you know, don't, that's it. But now you say, you know,

see, we are in a different world where if you fail to affirm who I am, now you're committing me harm. So just, you know, one of the first things Ken Smith said to me is Rosaria, I can accept you as you are, but I don't approve of you. Right. Now, I'm not so sure we could start there today. But I wasn't at all offended by that. I was a university professor. I was a grown-up. I was a grown up. I didn't need everybody to agree with me. And if I did, I would have been, you know, flattened long before I met Ken Smith and all of these Christians. And so I thought that was fine. I wanted to, I genuinely wanted to know why they thought what they did. And I wasn't, somehow, you know, I, I wasn't depending upon the whole world to affirm me. Yeah. And so that's,

That's an important thing to think about. We were actually grown-ups. And the more that a society offers laws and values and ideas that are further and further away from biblical truth, the more foolish and immature, we are going to create a citizenship. And so it is never in a Christian's interest. as someone who is to love your neighbor as yourself, to put a law between a fellow image bearer and a holy God that would prevent her from coming to Christ.

And so something like the Ibergefell decision is a terrible sin. Christians should repent of this. This is awful. And you certainly should not be, you know, sort of a la David French, trying to come up with some bizarre, way that you're going to import, you know, pluralism as some kind of a gospel defense, that's crazy.

That's foolish. And it makes me wonder if you want people like me to come to Christ. I mean, do you want that or not? I've never, I actually have not, I have not heard it explained that way. Of course, I agree with you on the Obergefell decision and the kinds of laws that have affirm what we know is sin is just not a definition of marriage that has ever legitimately existed. Two men, two women now are seeing more than just two because why not? It's limitless. But I've never heard it explained that supporting a law that legalizes gay marriage is actually an inhibition to someone repenting and believing in the gospel. Can you explain that a little bit further? That's really interesting.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's really, if you think about it, I don't think this is like, this is not Christian rocket science. This is really, really simple. The job of the civil magistrate is to punish evil and to allow good to flourish. And if it flips that around, if it starts to punish the, if it starts to allow evil to flourish, then by necessity it will have to punish, the good. But just for a minute, think about how powerful this is. There's only one entity that wants you, that prohibits repentance, wants you to not repent. And that's Satan himself. So any law that would make it hard for someone to repent of a sin is itself sin. And any person who in any way supports that or even kind of muddies the waters on that is in gross violation of God's love for lost people. I mean, I felt like I was being torn apart by wild horses when I came to Christ. Now, I was obviously not quote unquote legally married, but I had co-authored the university's domestic partnership policy, which was actually a forerunner to gay marriage in the 90s.

That, you know, just getting my lesbian partner off my health insurance was really hard. Yeah. I can't imagine how difficult it would be today. Yeah. So basically you're saying it creates even more of a hassle, just logistically and practically for someone. And it sucker punches you every step of the way. could you be doing this? How can you be hurting someone? How could you, you know, Satan loves you you to think that you are so deep into your sin that to repent now would really be a trouble.

And just the opposite is true. Because wherever you are, I don't care where you are. I don't care how deep it is. If you repent right now, you have the Lord Jesus Christ as both your judge and your advocate. So he's your lawyer. He'll get you out of it. It is bad. It is deep. It is And I understand that. Yes. But if you repent and believe, you have the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so what you see among all of these, I don't know what to call them. I see at this point, you have to make the distinction between Christians who want to go to heaven

and Christians who want to have, I don't know, New York Times, you know, columns. But the Christians who are very, very concerned about, you know, how difficult it would be for people to leave their, you know, their lives, do you not believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, who created the mountains and told them where to stand, who created man and woman in his image, not as his image, but in his image, who created humanity with a design purpose. Do you not think he knows how to make it all better? not just okay, but glorious? Right. I don't know.

I think that once, anyway, I just, I don't know, it's baffling to me. That's basically like saying it's in, sorry, go ahead and me to. The only person who wants you to not repent is Satan and his minions. So if some Christian says, oh, I don't know, I don't think we should dismantle gay marriage. That would be so hard on these gay people. You know, you might want to preach the gospel to that person. Yeah. Wow. It's like saying that there is some, there are some masses or some complications that are totally

inextractable to God. That they're just, they're too, it's not that they're too complicated for us, they're saying or for people, but that they're actually too complicated for God. That he is even looking at this and saying, wow, you guys are too far gone. And you're exactly right. That is what Satan tells people. That tells, that's what he tells people who are caught in sin. You're too far into this lie. You're too far into this mess. You can't get out. out of it. You might as well just injure life. You might as well just go deeper into sin. You might as well just lie a little bit more. And I see that even more, I think. And the, whatever you want to call it, gender confusion, gender deceit, transgender phenomenon in which

someone's actual physical body is maimed, perhaps irreversibly. I mean, for that person to come to repentance. That is even, wow, that's even more difficult, especially if you're someone, your entire young life, you've been affirmed as the opposite sex. I mean, really Satan's got a foothold to tell you, nope, you are too far gone, right? But Christians need to answer that. Because at least what I have seen from my perspective, gospel promises may be the most beautiful to our detransitioners out there because the gospel promise is that God can't be mocked.

So whatever in your sin or your confusion or your delusion or your mental illness or your victimization, whatever you allow to happen to your body will not be permanent

because in the New Jerusalem you will be the man that God made you to be. You will be the woman that God made you to be. And so there is the absolute ultimate hope in the gospel. If not now, I mean, we have so many examples of detransitioners now who are living godly, beautiful lives. If not now, then certainly later.

So in Christ, there is the only hope. And tell us, because you wrote an article about this recently that I thought was very interesting, how Christians should approach, not detransitioners, but people who are gender confused, people who believe and present as the opposite sex. You wrote how you kind of subscribe to this idea, which I've seen mostly propagated by Preston Sprinkle and others, of pronoun politeness or pronoun hospitality. Basically, the idea for those who are unfamiliar is that you kind of, that's how you get in with someone. That's how you earn their trust. That's how you show the loving towards them. You kind of affirm their stated identity by using their preferred pronouns. So calling a man that you know a man is a she, et cetera. And then that kind of gives you the entryway to eventually build a relationship and share the gospel. You were once kind of convinced by that line of reasoning, but recently you've said, nope, that was a saying I repented of that. So tell us about that. Yeah, absolutely. So yes. I mean, I definitely believed in that.

And that's kind of an old, an old, just, you know, an old follow-through from my gay rights days. That's this whole pronoun hospitality thing. And I, you know, I know people. I have met people. I know people who's the particular imprint of Adam's sin on their life is this war that is inside of them and this self-hatred about the sexual anatomy. that they have. And so the general idea was don't, don't, when you meet an unstable person, don't, don't make it even more unstable. And so I believed and I subscribed to that for years and years. And in the new book I have coming out in September, I have actually, I think maybe, I don't know, multiple pages of repentance

of the things that I believed, even as a Christian, the things that followed me through. Why? I don't know because I'm stupid because my sanctification isn't complete. Which is true for all of us. Yeah, right, right. But it's worse for a public figure. Public sins have they, public sins put your sins on blast. Yeah. So it's not like, you know, I'm just the, you know, the pastor's wife next door who, you know, has muddled ideas. No, I write them in books that lots of people read. So that's a problem. But what's been really obvious of late is that the pronoun issue is no longer a terminological issue. And this is where Preston Sprinkle and Mark Yarrhouse are either just, maybe they're just fools or maybe they're deceptively wrong. But we've had this conversation now for a couple of years. So they get to be one or

the other or they get to repent. That's the, that's the line I'm drawing in the sand here. Because we are no longer talking about terminology. We're not talking about looking up in your synonym finder, you know, different versions of the same words so that you can, you know, lighten up your writing. We're talking about ideology. We're talking about an idea that has a material force. And I mean, my friend Andrew Branch put it this way. I thought it was brilliant. You know, yesterday the DOJ filed a lawsuit challenging Tennessee's new law, protecting mine. from transgender ideology. And this is my friend Andrew said.

He said, oh, look, the 14th Amendment is now claimed by the federal government over castrating minors. Yeah. Okay. So how do we know that this is ideology? What the DOJ did yesterday. Yeah. This isn't terminology. And anybody who says it is is either a fool or is working for Satan.

And if I can just quote the Bible here for a moment, second Corinthians four one, therefore having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But this is where I want to put all those people I called out in my article on on notice here. But we have renounced disgraceful underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word. Those who are still using personal transgendered pronouns and claiming that they're just trying to practice kindness are indeed practicing cunning and tampering with God's word. This is really serious. And so my article was meant to do two things. It was to identify a problem, but also to call other public figures like myself who have. committed this sin for years and years to repentance, not course correction. Repentance. Those are different things because this is the Aiken in the camp. And if you remember from Joshua, what happened didn't go so well for Aiken. And if we in the evangelical church are wondering why it's

not going so well for us, it's because of sin. Not the sin, not the makeup sin. of the social justice warriors, but the actual sins that the Bible teaches us, of which pronoun hospitality is one. You know, my friend M.D. Perkins pointed out to me recently that pronouns are in the public domain, and that means that you really can't control how somebody uses a word in the public domain.

And yet the fact that even the federal government thinks it has the right to do that tells you, We are in a moment where if you as a Christian want to actually fulfill the command in Psalm 9610, which says, say among the heathen that the Lord reign, you will need to defy this. But first, it's a clean house. Evangelicals need to be called to the carpet. And I'm willing to do that. Yes. I love how you put it in your article because you're,

reiterating, emphasizing the truth that to call a man she is a lie. It's a lie. And it's a lie that goes against God's Word, Genesis 127, the first place that we see that God made us male and female. We don't see any biblical category of being able to identify as a gender that is different than our biological sex. So to call someone something that is different than their biological sex is a lie. And here's the question that you ask that I think is very poignant. Does any real Christian believe crafting a relationship on falsehood will give the gospel a better hearing. And is that how people are converted by meeting God on sins terms and hearing nice things about themselves? I think a lot of Christians really do believe that, though.

Yeah, I do too. I mean, I recently had a situation in my community where, you know, there was, I mean, you know the story. There's a there's a, there's a, there's a, team and and there's a transgender swimmer and then there are a lot of people trying to figure out what to do and you know and I would say how you deal with actually proclaiming the gospel in a hostile world will be reflected in some way by the kind of church that you attend and if you are in a church that believes that God loves you has a perfect plan to your life and wants your five-year-olds have every enrichment opportunity available, you're going to fail this test. You're going to fundamentally be ashamed of the gospel. You're going to defy what Paul says in Romans

116. And you are going to anybody who thinks that you can't, let me just put it out there, anybody who thinks that you can put your kids in government schools and that you can be a soft presence and come out okay, you know, you are not living in reality. Because if you want to be a soft presence in Sodom, you are either going to be apostate or you're going to come out like lots. Neither are those are like the high bar to aspire to. That's an interesting way to put it. The soft presence, And you hear this kind of defense a lot while my children are a soft presence in the public school. I'm a soft presence. And really what you're saying is that you don't want to be that the bright light that Jesus calls us to be in the darkness.

You kind of want to be a diffused night light that isn't really noticed or isn't really seen, but you can still say that you're on. And you're saying that doesn't really work. At some point, someone's going to come over and unplug you or cover you up. Well, exactly. And you know what? You might have thought that worked 20 years ago because the, you know, there were still foundations that were holding. And so, you know, you didn't have transgender ideology as part of an anti-bullying legislation in the government school. So, you know, you had a more control. So I could hear, I could imagine somebody 20 years ago saying, you know, well, here's why it was different. And okay, okay, I can understand. It might be different. But the reality is after a burghapal, that middle road that people want to walk on, and you know about that middle road because Tim Keller loves that middle road. It's the, you know, it's the center church. It's, you know, redeemed the city. Well, that third way.

And, you know, I used to write books about the third way. So, like, I get it. I used to believe that stuff. So you can, you know, blame me for some of this, too. But in war, borders closed. In war, roads get washed out. That middle road is washed out. And the only way that you can walk on it right now is by conceding the moral language to the left.

And if you yield the moral language to the left, you are in no business to be a Christian presence. Because to be a Christian presence means you have to say things that will be considered bigotry. Yes. They're not. They're biblical. But you can either feed the moral language to the left or you can offer biblical language. And most of the people that I talk to, especially the nervous housewives who have put their

children in government schools so that they can get their nails done, most of those people think that they, you know, well, Rosaria, you know, we're to be, you know, in the world but not of the world. Well, newsflash, you're not strong enough. Right. And now you need to work on that. Gosh, I could talk to you for so much longer. There's so many questions that I have of you. But I want to end with asking you to give two messages. And I, you know, as summarized as we can, I know that's difficult. One, to the Christian who is not struggling with the sin of sexual identity, if you want to call it that. but who is not sure how to approach this and lovingly. Maybe they are nervous. They're in the workplace or whatever. Some people even feel that they are being basically coerced to share their own pronouns,

which I think is a whole part of their ideological ritual that you shouldn't be a part of. Or they love someone deeply in their lives who is gay and has a partner or is quote unquote married. and or who thinks that they're the opposite sex. And they want to stand in truth, but they don't know how lovingly. That's the first message. What would you say to that person if you were standing in front of them and you only had a few seconds to encourage them? I'll let you answer that and then I'll ask you for the last message. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think that's a real challenge. How to stay connected to your loved ones without becoming indoctrinated? Or, you know, the alternate is also true. how to stay connected without mocking and deriding and, and, and, you know, just retorting to just cruelty. And I would say the strength of your church is going to determine that. But you are to stay connected without being indoctrinated. And I would just recommend, and I do in my article, you know,

the amazing life and the ministry of a woman named Laura Perry Smallt, who is a counselor. and she lived as a quote unquote transgendered man for, you know, for years and years and years. And during all those years, her loving conservative Christian family and church refused to use her pronouns. And they did that because they loved her for real. They loved her in real time. They prayed for her. They stayed connected to her.

And when the Lord transformed her heart and her mind, she went back to the people who didn't lie. to her, not to the people who did. So I would just encourage you to stay faithful in this waiting. And it is very, very hard. And the other thing I would say is don't discount how very truly traumatic this is for parents and for loved ones. And so please do not worship in some weak, ridiculous megachurch, just because you've always been there. Go to a church that's solid. Go to a place that's preaching the real gospel and surround yourself with praying faithful Christians. And I would also say, and it's a hard one, but I think we all have to get up every morning and pray to the Lord. Lord, if I lose my job today for your glory, please protect me and my children.

Don't cave. Don't cave. Hebrews 11 is where you would look. Look, it's the same. The gospel's going to win, whether you're sawn in two or whether you're saved from the mouths of the lion. Now, I know which one you'd prefer because I know which one I'd prefer. But our lives are not our own. We are owned by Christ. Yes. And to the person who is struggling, they're either listening to this and they're very angry and they're thinking, oh, these two bigots coming together, these two fobs coming together and talking about this, or maybe they're listening and they're right on the precipice. But the extractions that they would have to make in their lives as someone who thinks they're transgender or homosexual, they're intimidated by them.

What would be your encouragement to those people? Yeah, absolutely. Well, probably both of us would say, you know, reach out to us. Come to our churches. If you're my neighbor, you know, join me. You know, and again, the scripture verse that I would say, when I know when I was really struggling, and it's a serious struggle, it's not a struggle. Sexual sin is a really serious struggle because it's something that's inside you, not outside of you. But something that's always been very comforting is also in Second Corinthians, we are afflicted in every way but not crushed.

Okay, you're afflicted. You're not crushed. You're Christian. Perplexed, but not driven to despair. Okay, you're perplexed. Why do I feel this way? Why, you know, how can I go on? You are persecuted but not forsaken.

You will never be forsaken by Christ. You are struck down but not destroyed. You are always carrying in the body the double. of Jesus. So this is to someone who's a Christian and struggling. And someone who is not a Christian and struggling, I would say, you need to get out from the middle of the intersection. You need to get to one side or the other. And the only safe side is in Christ. He made you. He knows you. He will take care of you. And the church is here for you. And yes, I understand that according to the the law of the land were bigots.

I mean, just by not wanting to use pronouns, I'm a bigot. But I think that's, I think that's ideologically driven. And I think it's foolish. And I don't think you should believe that. Yes. I think that you should believe God. Who's more likely to make a mistake in what you're thinking right now? You are the God who made the universe.

Well, it's, you know, we are fallible. God is not. Homosexuality and transgenderism. are not immutable. God is immutable. Yes. And the only safe place to stand right now is at the foot of the cross. So come join us.

Yes. Amen. Thank you so much, Rosaria. And people can find your books, wherever books are sold. You can just type in her name. But you've also got another book coming out this fall you said. I think you said September. Five Lies of our anti-Christian age.

Is it available for pre-sale right now or not quite yet? Yes, it is. It is. Okay, great. Then I encourage people five lies of our anti-Christian age to go out and go ahead and claim your copy. I can't wait to read it. I'm super excited. Rosaria, thank you so much. Thank you just for your Christ-empowered courage and your obedience and the example that he's allowed you to set for all of us and repentance. I really appreciate that so much. Well, all glory goes to God. Yes, and amen. Thank you so much, Rosaria. Thank you. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Alley, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in

what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.