Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - September 07, 2026


＂This Is a Sham Marriage＂： What to Pray for Your LGBT Family Members ｜ Rosaria Butterfield


Episode Stats


Length

19 minutes

Words per minute

151.77

Word count

3,035

Sentence count

193

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

20

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Rosaria, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. One of my favorite people,
00:00:04.360 one of the most brilliant Christian thinkers, I believe, who has ever existed,
00:00:10.000 is speaking at Share the Arrows for the second time. You're also on the show.
00:00:13.760 You're laughing, but it's true, Rosaria. 1.00
00:00:15.900 You're ridiculous. You're ridiculous, and I love you. 1.00
00:00:20.780 You know what? Ridiculous as it may be, there are a lot of people who agree with me, 1.00
00:00:26.340 and they want your advice. And we got so many when I posted, Hey, we're going to have Rosaria 0.91
00:00:31.440 on the show. Do you have a question for her really about anything? But most of the questions
00:00:35.960 are about prodigal family member, a family member who identifies as gay, but also as Christian.
00:00:41.820 And they just want to know what you think. So instead of me answering the voicemails,
00:00:45.340 I want you to answer the voicemails today. So we'll just go ahead and play a couple of these.
00:00:49.380 Let's roll voicemail number one and let Rosaria listen.
00:00:52.580 And I just had a question about how you would handle a very close family member, a nephew, who grew up in a Christian family.
00:01:03.000 His father was a deacon, grew up knowing the truth, and has left the way and claims to be gay.
00:01:10.140 He's, quote, married to someone else, moved far away from his family, is in touch a little bit, but not too much.
00:01:16.780 But how would you handle just from afar, from a different state, loving him, but also bringing him back to the Lord, other than obviously praying for him?
00:01:27.240 Yeah, what a good question.
00:01:29.440 And you actually, in your voicemail, gave me exactly some of the first places you would start.
00:01:35.440 The first thing you always do, always do, is affirm your love for your prodigal.
00:01:41.520 And you do that in every way you can.
00:01:44.600 And the second thing that you are going to do, and it's not necessarily linear, we could
00:01:49.620 do all these at the same time, but you are going to be consistently praying for your
00:01:54.760 prodigal.
00:01:55.500 And one of the things you're praying for, and especially if your nephew doesn't live
00:01:59.560 close enough with you to really lean into his life, you're going to be praying that
00:02:04.060 the Lord's going to put many Christians in his life. 0.76
00:02:07.720 Now, you know, truth is really important, but truth without love isn't really Christian 0.83
00:02:13.460 love. 0.92
00:02:13.860 But the truth of the matter is this is a sham marriage. 0.99
00:02:17.360 There is no such thing as a gay marriage. 1.00
00:02:20.560 And so what you're going to do is pray that the Lord would destroy that. 1.00
00:02:24.640 In fact, that the Lord would remove all unholy, ungodly influences from your nephew's life.
00:02:32.180 Now, I don't recommend you pray that publicly in front of him or at the Thanksgiving table with, you know, if that's not quite going to be the effect that it has, the effect that you want it to have.
00:02:42.960 But that's your prayer to the Lord.
00:02:45.660 That's your prayer that goes to the throne of grace.
00:02:48.100 And the reason that we say that is that he needs to know that he's not loving this man
00:02:53.320 he claims to be loving.
00:02:54.780 He's actually searing his soul.
00:02:57.860 So, you know, your nephew, you might want to also be praying that the Lord would give
00:03:03.560 you insight and wisdom to know more about how your nephew is living and see if he'd
00:03:08.720 be willing to let you do some reconnaissance work with him.
00:03:11.820 You know, find out. Does he have a craving to fit in, to belong? Well, most of us do. Does he need to feel important? Are there other comorbidities and medications that might be making it really hard for him to get unstuck from harmful patterns?
00:03:30.060 or to what degree is activism involved.
00:03:34.620 All of these things will help you know how to speak a word in season.
00:03:38.720 But the most important thing you can do is not lose heart
00:03:42.520 because there really is no such thing as someone who has left the faith,
00:03:50.680 who is in the faith.
00:03:51.580 The concept of a faith deconstructor is a misnomer.
00:03:56.120 You can't construct your faith, so you can't deconstruct it.
00:03:59.300 Now, he's a wanderer, he's a prodigal, and we want him back.
00:04:04.420 I would just appeal to you to be reading deeply in the Word.
00:04:09.520 Psalm 61 really speaks to your situation.
00:04:12.420 To me, when my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
00:04:19.000 And then the reminder that your nephew is a prayed-for child.
00:04:23.760 He's not Satan's child.
00:04:25.700 He is a prayed-for child.
00:04:27.420 And he comes with a godly inheritance.
00:04:29.900 Also Psalm 61, you have given me the heritage of those who fear your name.
00:04:35.880 Well, that is, like it or not, what the Lord has given your nephew.
00:04:40.800 I think you like it.
00:04:41.700 I imagine he doesn't.
00:04:42.940 And he can run for a while, but not forever.
00:04:46.260 And so that would be my advice to you, to not lose heart and do not lose love.
00:04:53.260 Do not lose hope because it's not over yet.
00:04:59.340 It's just started.
00:05:00.400 And your prayers, as E.M. Bowne said once, are deathless.
00:05:04.280 They go to the throne of grace.
00:05:05.860 If you go to be with the Lord before you see this prayer answered, that's okay, because
00:05:12.120 the Lord Jesus Christ will be interceding on your behalf for this prayer, and we'll
00:05:17.740 see this through.
00:05:18.760 Hmm. Rosaria, thank you so much. And I just want to, I want to confess something because this is
00:05:26.900 not a good doubt or feeling that I have. And obviously your testimony disproves this doubt.
00:05:32.940 Whenever I see someone who is in a longstanding homosexual relationship, say they have adopted 0.53
00:05:40.580 kids or they've used surrogacy to procure kids and their life is totally intertwined, 0.81
00:05:46.580 seemingly inextricably intertwined from this person. It is difficult for me to envision that
00:05:55.160 person walking away from all of that, just because I can understand how hard that would be. It was
00:06:02.360 very hard for you. You write about that. And obviously nothing is too hard for God. Nothing
00:06:07.920 can thwart his will. We read that in Job 42 too. Yet if I am honest, like there's a little bit of
00:06:14.640 me. I look at someone like, you know, Jillian Michaels has talked about, she's thought about
00:06:20.120 Jesus or she's feels like she's discovered Jesus. And I look at her life and how intertwined it is
00:06:24.840 with this woman that she says that she is married to. And it's just like, is it possible for her to
00:06:31.560 like fully repent and see the truth? So can you talk about that? Because there might be some other
00:06:36.060 people in the audience that say, you know what? It's just too hard for someone to give all that up.
00:06:40.960 Right, right, right. Well, you know, I would say we all lack a godly imagination. And the more that our imagination is shaped by social media and shaped by cynicism and shaped by, you know, just the myriad of sad stories that surround us, we do.
00:07:00.780 we lack a godly imagination, but we need to remember something. And that is that the Lord
00:07:07.760 knows your loved one who seems to be intertwined in a very, you know, a decent place. But if God
00:07:18.840 calls it corrupt and an abomination, that is what it is. You don't see the inside of anybody's
00:07:27.180 heart. You don't see the inside of anybody's relationship. Because of sin in our own heart,
00:07:35.180 we have a hard time measuring and assessing the sin in our own heart and the sin in our own lives.
00:07:40.420 But I would just appeal to you, to the person who's writing this or to anyone thinking about
00:07:46.500 this, to open your Bibles to Hebrews 4 and go to verse 12, because you see in there that it is the
00:07:56.340 Word of God that actually knows you better than you know yourself. And it isn't just you, the nice
00:08:02.420 Christian raised in a nice Christian family with lots of generations, but that is to every image
00:08:09.020 bearer. What the Word of God says is this, for the Word of God is living and active, powerful,
00:08:16.420 sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and of joints
00:08:22.400 and marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. It's the Word of God
00:08:29.720 that discerns the thoughts and the intents of the heart. Not you, not me, not even the person
00:08:36.080 living it. But the next line, 13, is important too. And there is no creature hidden from his sight.
00:08:42.500 So you have to be willing to trust yourself with the God who made you, and you need to be willing
00:08:50.620 to trust your loved one who now needs to repent of sin. It's only an unbeliever who would stand 1.00
00:09:01.520 between the repentance factor and the image bearer. So if you love someone, you help them 0.96
00:09:11.340 to repent. And part of repentance is forsaking that which is evil and leaving it. Now, I mean,
00:09:19.200 And I have helped many, you know, I mean, you probably know this, but there are lots of older women who had identified as lesbian who are my age.
00:09:28.900 I'm in my 60s and who are who are needing to get gay divorced now.
00:09:34.040 And I am friends with many of these women and helping them untangle things.
00:09:40.560 And, you know, God is the creator of the redeemed and the sanctified life.
00:09:51.400 And so real Christians, genuine Christians should not interfere with that.
00:09:57.740 You know, one of the challenges is we have a lot of bad actors out there, especially
00:10:01.600 I would say on, you know, social media and YouTube.
00:10:04.440 And they are the classic definition that Peter gives us in 2 Peter of a false teacher, someone who gets some ill-gotten gain by giving really terrible advice to people.
00:10:17.700 And one really dangerous set of advice is this.
00:10:21.820 It's too hard.
00:10:23.300 It's not going to work out.
00:10:24.640 God's way isn't right.
00:10:26.040 There's nothing on the other side.
00:10:27.700 Those that level of doubt and discouragement, also known in the Old Testament as grumbling, was not a good thing for the Israelites.
00:10:39.920 And it's not a good thing for people who need to be brought out of, you know, in hope and joy and love and connection, sinful relationships into the sanctification of the purity of new life.
00:10:57.180 And again, I would say the church needs to be ready to take in the exiles, to break into the loneliness that does accompany these good and necessary changes.
00:11:12.100 But no, you're not a Christian friend if you interfere with someone's repentance.
00:11:18.300 You're there to help facilitate it and encourage them, root them on in that journey.
00:11:25.820 Amen. Amen.
00:11:27.180 Okay, let's listen to the second question. It has to do with pronouns.
00:11:32.940 I'd love some advice on how to navigate a relationship with my brother when we have a
00:11:37.480 difference of opinion about his child's name and pronouns. My niece is now going by a different name
00:11:43.620 and using they them pronouns. I'm not comfortable using the pronouns and I'm also struggling with
00:11:49.920 using the new name. I rarely talk directly to my niece as she is an adult, but I find myself
00:11:56.900 avoiding conversations with my brother altogether because I don't know how to talk about his child
00:12:01.800 without causing conflict? Should I just use the name I've always used or avoid names altogether
00:12:07.440 and keep things general like asking how the family is doing? Great question. First of all,
00:12:16.620 I would say this. Your brother is what we would say in the LGBTQ alphabet lexicon. Your brother
00:12:24.320 is an ally. And the hardest people to deal with, truly, honestly, the hardest nuts to crack
00:12:31.880 are the allies because they have a Messiah complex. They believe they are the only people
00:12:37.760 who can defend their loved ones from you and from me and from reality. Okay. So you need to
00:12:48.780 know that about your brother. He has a Messiah complex. He sees himself as the savior of his
00:12:56.320 daughter. And he does not see how his unhitching his desire to be a good dad and a protective dad
00:13:08.780 from the reality and the truth of her situation, how he has actually become someone who is now
00:13:15.700 harming her. So how you deal with someone with a savior complex is you're going to walk gently
00:13:22.480 and carefully. Um, but your niece is an adult and adults can be reckoned with as adults.
00:13:32.600 And depending upon where your niece is in the Gothic conveyor belts of transgender mutilation, 0.89
00:13:44.740 it really is going to depend upon how open she might be to you. But it certainly would not hurt 0.99
00:13:53.640 at all. And I would strongly recommend to try to develop a relationship with her. And I don't,
00:14:00.120 and alone without your brother or without anybody else, see if she was willing to correspond with
00:14:07.600 you or to better yet talk on the phone once a week or something like that. It's hard to minister to
00:14:14.440 somebody and you just don't even have the details of her life, but find out about the details of
00:14:20.080 her life. I don't know anybody who has gone down the transgender conveyor belt who hasn't been to
00:14:27.220 some degree influenced by activism, by depression, by a profound need to belong. I don't know how 0.80
00:14:38.440 old your niece is. But if she is in her 30s, I am seeing just a startling uptake of women in 0.98
00:14:47.040 their 30s suddenly declaring themselves trans men, trans masculine, becoming declaring themselves
00:14:55.240 lesbian, joining throuples. And I do wonder if crushing loneliness isn't part of this. So no, 0.54
00:15:04.280 I don't think there's any way forward by telling lies.
00:15:11.640 I really don't.
00:15:13.000 And I think the relationship that you would have with your brother and your niece would
00:15:20.600 be a relationship filled with walking on eggshells, filled with fear of man, because sin doesn't
00:15:28.920 stay where you put it.
00:15:29.960 So it's never enough.
00:15:31.180 Your celebration is never going to be enough.
00:15:35.020 So you need to stay within the perfect safety of the truth of the word of God.
00:15:43.120 But know that your brother probably has a big savior complex going on and he doesn't
00:15:49.240 trust you.
00:15:50.260 And know that your niece might be actually an easier person to talk to because the reality 1.00
00:15:58.180 of transgenderism is gothic and dangerous and horrible. The kind of surgeries, the kind of 1.00
00:16:06.340 surgeons who will do a double mastectomy for just for example, are not the same surgeons that would
00:16:12.600 do a double mastectomy for a woman with cancer. The doctors that go into transgender, quote unquote,
00:16:18.920 healthcare are the butchers. And I would just recommend to you, if you want to learn more 0.99
00:16:25.600 about, you know, just some of the backstory of this.
00:16:30.400 There is a scholar by the name of Mary Weller who works with Truth Exchange, and she has
00:16:36.820 done probably the best research of anybody, giving you, I think, some background on what
00:16:43.180 your niece is probably going through.
00:16:45.960 But again, pray, say what needs to be said, but don't think that fear of man is going
00:16:53.220 to do anything but trap you.
00:16:56.580 And in fact, that's what Proverbs 29, 25 says.
00:16:59.300 It says, the fear of man is a snare.
00:17:02.820 And a snare is an instrument of execution, and it snaps at very unpredictable times.
00:17:08.980 But the verse goes on to tell you that, but the fear of God is safe.
00:17:15.320 So that is the tightrope that many, many families are walking right now.
00:17:21.680 But the way forward is in the truth of God and the love of your family, genuine, consistent, honest.
00:17:30.860 So don't retreat, please.
00:17:33.300 Don't disappear.
00:17:35.960 And hopefully they won't go no contact with you because that's the other reality. 0.71
00:17:40.600 The other reality is that 30 years ago, the rite of passage in the LGBTQ movement was coming out. 0.61
00:17:47.640 And the whole point of coming out was to persuade people to see things from your point of view. 0.98
00:17:52.820 And sadly, today, the rite of passage is cutting off, cutting off body parts and cutting off you. 0.82
00:17:59.640 That is a horrible thing. 0.58
00:18:01.560 But don't you be the one to cut yourself off from them.
00:18:06.080 They need you.
00:18:07.360 They need you desperately.
00:18:11.320 That's so good.
00:18:12.680 And can you tell us about your book?
00:18:14.280 You mentioned your book.
00:18:16.220 It's really to people who have someone who is estranged or prodigal or rejecting the
00:18:20.980 gospel in their family.
00:18:22.520 When does it come out?
00:18:24.180 Yeah, I'm laughing because me talking about my book is a little bit like talking to a
00:18:29.980 three-year-old about what you want to be when you grow up, because unfortunately, before
00:18:34.580 the book can come out, I need to write it.
00:18:37.280 But I am working on a book.
00:18:40.420 I know, I know, exactly.
00:18:41.640 Yeah, you're like, oh, yeah, yeah.
00:18:42.880 I am working on a book for the, uh, uh, for the, for families of LGBTQ prodigals.
00:18:50.660 And that's because, um, it isn't, you know, it isn't just parents, right?
00:18:55.040 We, we, we meet, um, husbands and wives and, you know, grandmas and, and daughters.
00:19:02.700 And so, um, so it's for the families of LGBTQ prodigals.
00:19:07.900 And it really is just six biblical principles so that you can stay the course in being what
00:19:15.360 may, you know, what very well may be a lifeline for that, for that prodigal.
00:19:19.700 And I will tell you that I am seeing many prodigals come back.
00:19:25.040 This has been a big year of prodigals returning.
00:19:28.280 So unfortunately, the book can't come out until Rosaria actually turns the book in.
00:19:34.320 So, you know, I'm getting slow.
00:19:37.900 That's okay. Well, you'll come back on when the book is written and when the book is coming out,
00:19:46.020 then we will have you back on and we'll talk about it then. Rosaria, thank you so much. I'm
00:19:49.700 so excited to see you in October. It's going to be a great time and it's always an honor to talk
00:19:55.080 to you. Well, the privilege and the honor is all mine. Thank you, dear one.