Rosaria

“I was a tenured lesbian professor and gay rights activist who set out to write a book attacking Christianity — and two years of reading the Bible turned my entire world upside down.”

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What they struggled with

LGBTQ background Shame Religious trauma

False refuges

Identity / performance Religion without relationship

What this story reveals about God

Relentless pursuit Patience Father's heart Faithful to his word Teacher's heart Restorer

Religious background

Roman Catholic Agnostic

Main testimony theme

How they came to faith

Intellectual conviction Relational influence

Content advisory

Before you watch

This is a calm, intellectually rigorous testimony from a former tenured lesbian professor and gay rights activist — no graphic content, no addiction, no abuse. What makes it arresting is the precision with which Rosaria describes the intellectual and spiritual journey from hostile unbelief to faith, and the theological clarity she brings to what conversion actually cost her.

What this story teaches

People do not always come to faith through crisis — sometimes the most resistant people are reached through sustained intellectual honesty and a friendship that refuses to flinch.

How God moved

The lie Rosaria carried

I had found my real self as a lesbian — homosexuality was a cleaner, more moral way to live, and my identity was authentic and fixed.

What Jesus showed her

She had built her entire identity on the conviction that lesbianism was her real self — authentic, moral, and fixed. Reading Romans 1 forced her to sit with the possibility that she was wrong about that: that her identity was not a discovery but a suppression of truth, and that she had been persecuting Jesus the whole time.

Go Deeper

People do not always come to faith through crisis — sometimes the most resistant people are reached through sustained intellectual honesty and a friendship that refuses to flinch.

What you can take from this

If you have been using your intelligence as a shield against God, try this week to read one chapter of the Gospel of John with a notebook — not to argue, but to ask what it would mean if it were true.

Identity theft

I simply believed that I had found my real self. My life as a lesbian just seemed like a cleaner and more moral way to live. The category of sexual orientation gave me an identity that felt authentic and fixed — real, even if not true.

Counterfeit spirituality

I was fervent for the worldviews of Freud, Hegel, Marx, and Darwin. Following Marx, I believed sin was just applied cultural phobia. This intellectual framework functioned as a substitute worldview that inoculated me against the Bible's claims.

Isolation pattern

My lesbian sin was not a singular act. It was a network of people and practices that made up my life — habits, patterns, people, a mortgage, dissertations to direct. The web of community made repentance feel impossible.

1

I prayed a scary prayer that night. I prayed that God would give me the faith to obey before I understood.

2

I prayed that God would be pleased to reveal his son to me. I prayed that my heart would be a vessel of Jesus. I prayed that my life would become endeared by him.

3

I prayed that God would give me the faith to see my sin as sin and then repent of it at its root.

4

I came to Jesus alone, open-handed and naked. I had no dignity upon which to stand. There is only one thing to do when you come face to face with a living Jesus. You fall on your face and you repent of your sins.

5

I joined the church in taking covenant vows before God and the congregation.

6

I developed a daily practice of Bible reading, psalm singing, prayer, the study of the Westminster Shorter and Larger Catechisms, as well as other creeds and confessions.

Romans 1:18–32

Found in margin of Jill's seminary book; reading it was a pivotal confrontation with the Bible's definition of homosexuality as suppression of truth.

Romans 7:18

A friend shared it while probing Rosaria's lesbianism; she recognized it described sinful sexuality as idolatrous and ravenous.

Psalms 119:56

Singing this line in congregational worship was the precise moment of conversion — 'two weight-bearing walls of my hard heart came crashing down.'

Psalms 119:1

She read Psalm 119 early each morning finding it comforting in the months before conversion.

John 7:17

Ken's sermon on this verse exposed the quicksand she was stuck in — her demand to understand before obeying — and led to her scary prayer of surrender.

Galatians 2:20

She learned what it means to live a Galatians 2:20 life — Christ living in her — as part of post-conversion sanctification.

Psalms 103:12

Cited in her encouragement to prodigals: 'As far as the east is from the west, the Lord has put away your sin.'

Proverbs 29:25

Cited as a warning to parents of prodigals not to yield to blackmail: 'The fear of man lays a snare.'

Matthew 7:13–14

Ken's children's sermon on the narrow and wide gate prompted Rosaria to think of the gay pride march — wide, full of people just like her.

Like Paul, Rosaria was actively opposing Christ through her activism and writing, only to discover she had been persecuting Jesus the whole time.

Rosaria explicitly identifies as a prodigal who came to herself, left a far country of unbelief, and returned to the Father open-handed and naked.

Two years of wrestling with scripture and God before surrender; she describes the Bible as requiring wrestling before yielding its blessing.

Rosaria's Christian Walk

Prayer

The power of Prayer — Christian neighbor and pastor stood in the gap for Rosaria.

Ken Smith invited Rosaria to weekly dinners, gave her a Bible and reading list, engaged her intellectually on the worldview difference between postmodernism and biblical faith, and preached through Matthew and John in ways that kept disarming her. He refused to let her go when she tried to walk away. He brought the church to her rather than inviting her in, protecting both her and his congregation. Later, Jill — a transgender friend who had been a Presbyterian minister — gave Rosaria two milk crates of seminary books, one of which contained a margin note directing her to Romans 1:18-32, a second pivotal bridge.

Is today your day?

Yes — I'm Ready

Absolutely, He will.

You don't have to figure everything out right now.

You don't need to have all the answers.

If something stirred in your heart while you were watching or reading — that's not nothing.

That is the Holy Spirit gently knocking on the door of your heart.

Stay right here. There's no rush. The Spirit doesn't pressure or hurry.

Watch another video. Read a little more. Take your time.

When you're ready — even if “ready” just means a little curious — Jesus is ready to meet you.

You don't have to clean up your life first.

You don't have to pass any test.

You only need to say a simple “yes” to Him.

He will take care of the rest.

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

Luke 11:9

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