57 - Catholic Perspective on Ministry
Lila Rose is the founder of Live Action, a pro-life advocacy group, as well as an author and podcast host. In November of 2025, her show featured licensed therapist Michael Gasparro and ministry leaders Andrew Comiskey and Kim Zember, who “shared how their past struggles with same-sex attraction became a path to deeper healing and intimacy with God.”[1] Michael Gasparro has a private practice and composes music. Andrew Comisky is the Founding Director of Desert Stream Ministries, established in 1980, and uses the Living Waters curriculum, a 20-week closed-group discipleship program that has helped thousands of people.[2] Kim Zember is a speaker, author, and founder of Boldly Beloved Ministries.
Their discussion with Lila Rose was brilliant. Here are some highlighted quotes:
On Redemption & Transformation
• “I need a Savior… Jesus became my hope.” (Andrew)
• “He showed up… I tasted and saw something I had never tasted and seen before.” (Kim)
• “God is Creator… but He is also Redeemer. He has power to remake us.” (Andrew)
On Order, Desire, & Anthropology
• “What is order? Not just sexuality… If there’s not [order], it’s called chaos.”
• “The trajectory of our sexuality is intact… It is never homosexual or transgender or bisexual.”
• “We are created to be a gift—man for woman and woman for man.”
On using LGBTQ+ identity labels, even after agreeing with the Christian sexual ethic:
• “It keeps people stuck in a false narrative.” (Michael)
• “Did God label me or my brother or sister with that? I’m genuinely concerned.” (Kim)
• “My desires do not define me.” (Andrew)
On Misunderstandings about Therapy:
• “We should be allowed to say ‘I wonder why’… I am allowed to ask why.” (Michael)
On the Church
• “We need to covenant together to walk in chastity… healthy community is critical.” (Andrew)
• “Don’t be afraid of your church’s vision of human flourishing… it’s stamped into the human person’s identity.” (Michael)
Michael also talked about new research into those who have experienced attractions to the same sex yet do not label themselves as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. This study revealed:
We did not find that participants who rejected an LGB identity had significantly worse levels of depression, anxiety, and psychosocial flourishing than those who were LGB identified. Assuming sexual minorities who reject an LGB identity are indeed subject to proximal sexual minority stressors, this seems at odds with minority stress and sexual identity theories that assume adoption of an LGB identity is the healthiest pathway of sexual minority identity development. This plausibly could be the result of the underrepresentation in research of sexual minorities who reject an LGB identity or are otherwise living within conservatively religious communities, a problem we discuss below. Pg 39
Neglecting to include those of us who don’t use these labels has created a blind spot in research for years, impacting political and mental health policies:
To put it another way, when studies utilize LGB self-identity as the sexual minority inclusion criterion, they exclude those sexual minorities rejecting an LGB identity by definition and render these individuals invisible.
This potentially serious limitation of the research literature has implications for legal and mental health advocacy, particularly where legislative and policy initiatives impact sexual minorities and their conservative religious communities (Rosik, 2017). Caution should be exercised not to assume theories and constructs derived from LGB samples can be easily generalized to sexual minorities who do not share such an identity (Lefevor et al., 2020). Similarly, using studies limited to or dominated by LGB-identified persons alienated from or uninterested in traditional faith communities (e.g., Dehlin et al., 2015; Hamilton & Gross, 2013; Ryan et al., 2020; Sowe, Brown et al., 2014; Sowe, Taylor et al., 2017) as a basis for laws or advocacy efforts that impact sexual minorities in traditional religious settings may be a dubious practice (e.g., advocating the curtailment of religious freedoms to promote LGB well-being; Sowe, Taylor, et al., 2017). Legal opinions as well as official pronunciations and clinical guidance from professional associations in this arena need to be grounded in population-based samples able to identify sexual minorities who reject LGB labels or samples purposefully recruiting sexual minorities not LGB identified. Furthermore, mental health professionals encountering sexual minority clients who are (or are not) embedded within conservative religious communities should not assume their rejection of an LGB identity label inhibits their ability to live healthy, meaningful, and satisfying lives. Pg 40
The discussion on the Lila Rose show is well worth watching, and it is good to see such quality ministry made available in Catholic and Protestant circles.
