How did a young man go from re-starting a College Democrats chapter at Liberty University to driving George Soros out of Peru? It took his father’s courageous example, the irrational hostility of transgender activists, and the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit. For Christian Rosas, his faith was tested in the crucible of criticism and emerged as gleaming gold (1 Peter 1:7). “I was always a fighter, a troublemaker, but I just didn’t have the right banner,” Rosas said. But there came a moment when “I couldn’t hide. I either had to stand up straight or relinquish to my faith.”

Rosas leads the “Don’t Mess with Our Kids” movement, a pro-life, pro-family matrix that has spread from his native Peru to more than 40 countries, including the United States. But Rosas wasn’t always a movement leader or even a conservative, even though his father was a pastor in the Christian Missionary Alliance.

During his college days, “I wasn’t conservative back then,” Rosas said in an interview with The Washington Stand. Rosas graduated with a degree in International Relations from Liberty University (class of ’09), but not before he “restarted a defunct campus Democrats chapter at Liberty because he was upset about George W. Bush’s war in Iraq,” according to Religion Unplugged.

After a brief stint in the Peace Corps, Rosas returned to his native Peru to assist his father, Julio Rosas, who was elected to a five-year term in Congress in 2011.

“When he got into Congress, as a pastor, he realized that his main hot points that he was going to defend [were] family, and life, and religious liberty,” Rosas recalled. “So, I decided to [create] first what was called the National Pro-Family Coordinator, [which] was active for five years. All we did was inform churches about the risks, legally, that could arise if we don’t fight against abortion, gender ideology, and all of the threats it could pose on religious liberty.”

Deciding to Stand

In Peru, debates over the LGBT agenda grew much more heated after the elder Rosas was re-elected for a second Congressional term in 2016. Rosas led Congressional opposition to sweeping pro-LGBT legislation, which paralleled the Equality Act introduced annually in the U.S. Congress. He even invited as an expert witness a psychologist from Mexico, who “said that homosexuals can overcome undesired same-sex attractions,” Christian explained. The bill was ultimately defeated that year.

But Julio’s troubles were not over. “They were just so terribly against him. The hatred was just too much from the media and everyone,” his son stated. “How could they be so fiercely hating on someone they barely even know? What is he saying that is making people go mad? And all he said was, ‘This is what the Lord says: He created us men and women’ … not even like complex, eloquent argument, just the simple statements that are common sense.”

Julio Rosas was hauled before the Ethical Commission of Congress, who “were about to oust him from office,” Christian said. “My father came to me and said, ‘Son, you are the one that was trained in the U.S. You went to Liberty University. You have to help me with the arguments. I’m a pastor. All I have is my Bible verses.’”

At first, Christian tried to dissuade his father from this dangerous course. “I was telling my dad, ‘You know what? You should try to shift topics and just do something else. Like, can you pick a less controversial issue?’ And he goes, ‘Son, I’m a pastor. This is what I’m called to do.’ And I said, ‘But dad, can’t you see, they’re about to destroy you? This is character assassination!’”

Then his father gave a response that changed his son’s life, “Yeah, but you have to make up your mind, too. Are you with him or against him?”

“That killed me, man. It did. It made me feel like such a coward. It made me feel so bad. So I really [reevaluated] everything,” Christian continued. “I asked myself, am I willing to go through this public humiliation as my father is? Like, he had to endure the clown outfit. Am I willing to do that too? And that’s when I came to terms, and I realized I was the proud one. I was the coward. I wasn’t able to stand and say ‘I believe’ publicly. And I repented. I repented with all my heart.”

The younger Rosas still believes he was a Christian before that point. “But I was never put in a situation where my name, my last name, my father” were ridiculed for the name of Christ, he said. “We were in the public media, viciously attacked. … So that moment made me decide.”

Building a Coalition

But ethics charges against Julio Rosas were quickly dwarfed by events. In late 2016 and early 2017, President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski and his administration unilaterally enacted pro-LGBT laws, using special authority he had been granted to deal with economic and security crises. These laws threatened criminal penalties and prison time for those who dared to speak publicly against transgender ideology. “That generated a huge threat to Christians [who] preach about our God, who is able to transform the life of a homosexual or trans[gender] person,” Rosas explained.

“That’s when we decided to transform the National Pro-Family Coordinator, and we rebranded, and we renamed it to ‘Don’t Mess with Our Kids,’” related Rosas. “We used the slogan ‘Don’t mess with our kids’ because it’s an irrefutable statement. Nobody wants anybody to mess with their kids.”

To build a coalition, “we summoned all of the church leaders we could — Pentecostal, charismatic, non-denominational, Baptist, even Roman Catholics from different orders,” he explained. “We signed a declaration known as the Lima Declaration,” in which the signers committed themselves to take a public stand for a biblical view of gender and sexuality.

“Don’t Mess with Our Kids” united various Christian groups in a true grassroots movement. The movement ran out of a small office, which Rosas personally supported, using the income from his day job as a gold mining lobbyist. The movement had no other funding except signs and other items donated by churches. Yet this effort — tied together by a shoestring budget — turned out 1.5 million Peruvians (5% of the nation’s population) for a single protest on March 4, 2017.

The “Don’t Mess with Our Kids” movement originally aimed to reverse the pro-transgender legislation, especially the provisions forcing pro-transgender ideology into schools. But the incumbent government officials proved stubbornly hostile to moderating the transgender policies. Before pro-family lawmakers could reverse the LGBT agenda, they impeached the education minister, voted “no confidence” in the prime minister and his cabinet, and forced President Kuczynski to resign before a second impeachment vote.

It took three years of dedicated advocacy — still without outside funding — for Rosas and the “Don’t Mess with Our Kids” movement to reverse Peru’s lurch into transgender ideology.

Confronting Lies with Boldness

Rosas attributes the movement’s success to the bold and uncompromising manner in which he and others stood upon biblical truth. “No matter what they did, we were not intimidated,” he told TWS. “It was me on TV, purposely, deliberately breaking the law and inspiring the church not to fear unjust laws. … The concept of civil disobedience is a concept that comes only from the Judeo-Christian values. Nowhere else [are you] taught civil disobedience.”

“For example, I was invited to a TV interview once with a trans [individual] who was the president of the Trans Association in Peru,” Rosas narrated. “The journalist would say, ‘Christian, this is the trans representative.’ She was a woman disguised as a man dressed like a man. So, the first thing I said was, ‘Good evening, ma’am.’”

“That made her go crazy,” he continued. “She said, ‘How dare you call me a ma’am? I’m a man. You should call me sir. I demand you retract your words and call me a man.’ So then I would say, ‘I’m sorry, but I cannot butcher my conscience and repeat a lie. Everyone knows it’s not truth.’ And the journalist was like, ‘You know, you’re committing a crime. You could go to prison.’ I said, ‘Yes, I know I plead guilty of breaking an unjust law. This is my ID number.’”

This strategy put Rosas at great personal risk. At the time, he had a wife and young daughter (he now has four children) who would have struggled if he were sent to prison.

But, by willfully violating the unjust laws, Rosas brought them into disrepute. “Everyone on social media would do the same and be like, ‘yeah, I plead guilty too, sue me as well,’” he added. “That’s how we were able to bring all of these unjust laws to a degree that was obsolete because nobody respected them.”

Scaring Away Soros

“We were successful to the point that George Soros himself tweeted against our movement,” said Rosas. Soros ordered a documentary against the “Don’t Mess with Our Kids” movement, which turned out to be a flop.

Then, Soros helped to fund a study on “how gender-restrictive groups may lose the legal battle, but win the communications and cultural war,” which featured Peru as “Case Study 1.” Soros “complained … that none of his strategies worked, and that he actually considers that this movement poses the greatest threat to everything he has advanced worldwide on gender because of this strategy,” Rosas summarized.

It reached the point where Soros “decided to pull completely out of the country,” added Rosas, “saying, ‘You know what? It’s a waste of money, Peru. We have advanced nothing in the past 10 years, and I’m just quitting.’ And he left Peru.”

Rosas recalled that Soros “sent an envoy to talk to me, like a year after he left,” to call a truce, of sorts.

Impacting Other Nations

But the “Don’t Mess with Our Kids” movement has spread far beyond Peru. It now has a presence in 45 countries, including “all of South America,” said Rosas.

Naturally, its presence generates opposition, too, Rosas added. “Wherever I would go, I [would] always have this little group of LGBT [activists] with their signs saying, ‘Death to Rosas.’”

The “Don’t Mess with Our Kids” movement has even established a presence in the U.S. Rosas recalled how American pastors contacted him for advice after reading the Soros-funded case study. “They were really shocked and, I guess, inspired by the attitude of the movement,” Rosas said.

“Our strategy is upfront, blunt. Preach the word. Fear not. Embrace the kingdom. Break the law purposely, politely, nonviolently, and be steadfast,” Rosas told the pastors. “We’re hoping and praying to God that he will be with us [in other countries] as he was in Peru, because we were able to oust all authorities that placed themselves in the way.”