Warning: The following article deals with sexual content, and should not be considered suitable for younger or more easily offended readers.
Those more familiar with this ministry may know my testimony. As you will know if you've read it, from my early childhood, I struggled with gender confusion. As a very young child, I claimed to be a girl. I would often pretend to be pregnant, at one point I pretended to have a husband, I would wear my female friends' makeup. I once got in trouble for using the girls' bathroom, and I didn't even understand why. I even experienced hatred. Aside from the fact I was bullied long after I stopped claiming to be female, I can even recall one serious incident in which some older boys pulled down my pants to prove I wasn't female, then threw me in some stinging nettles for lying to them about my gender. Before I had left primary school (around age 11, for you non British people), I had heard about sex changes, and wondered if, when I became an adult, it would be possible for me to have one. My desire to be female persisted into my teenage years, and by age 14, I had gained access to pornographic material, which I would unfortunately become addicted to for a very long time. However, it was very rare for me to feel any attraction to the girls. Rather, I would always want to be the girl. What she did, I desired to do, and what was done to her, I wanted done to me. With transgender surgery in mind, which certainly was not helped by shows featuring transgenders (portrayed by members of the actual gender), such as Ugly Betty, I even looked forward to the possibility that it could one day happen.
As time went on, though the desire to be female would never truly go away, I began to accept that it just isn't biologically possible. Turns out, that surgery I'd heard about, while it can make you resemble the opposite sex, cannot actually make you the opposite sex. But I discovered that it was still possible to live out my effeminate identity as a male. Homosexuality, it turned out, was not what I had childishly believed. It wasn't just kissing and... other things I won't describe on a Christian site, but will admit I believed was the limit of homosexual practice. There are actually ways men can have sex. So, while I would never be truly female, I could act on my attraction to men, and it wouldn't even be just boring kissing and sleeping naked together.
So I began identifying as gay, but not openly. I'd pretend to be straight, of course to avoid bullying (which I already experienced a lot of). I even had girlfriends, though the idea of eventually sleeping with them when we were of legal age was repugnant to me. When I reached legal age, I began the process of "coming out". Only to close friends at first, whereas to acquaintances I would only confess to being "25% gay", and even that only if they asked. I never told my family until long after I was a more faithful Christian, but I did join gay dating sites.
My coming out as gay and my eventual acceptance of Christianity just so happened to coincide. Due to foggy memory, I can't remember exactly how closely. I had always been interested in religion, and attended a Christian youth group just to learn about the faith, but as for when I started to believe, I can't say. What I can say is the youth group never actually dealt with the issue of homosexuality, meaning even after I converted, and had read about halfway through Genesis, I had no idea homosexuality was a sin. Strangely, however, my friends did. My mainly atheist friends. I may have had friends within the church, but they weren't close, so I wasn't "out" to them yet. So, my atheist friends, who ironically knew more about Biblical sexuality than me, began to show me what Scripture says about homosexuality.
Naturally, I resisted. God made me this way, didn't He? Maybe He put me in the wrong body and He's ok with me acting like it. Or heck, the Gospel is about grace, right? So even if it is a sin, He'll forgive me, even if I go all the way and eventually become a gay porn actor. Well, if you know my testimony, you know who eventually won that fight. Before I got baptised, rather than begging God for permission to stay gay, I prayed for permission to stop. And after a very long struggle, He eventually answered through a church girl I, beyond all imagination, developed very real feelings for. She did not go on to become my wife, but she did become the reason I actually want one. By my early 20s, I was finally able to identify as an ex-gay, although I do confess, especially during one particular period of what can only be described as borderline apostasy, I would struggle against same sex attraction again, and I have learned the hard way that I am not invincible. As my friend once said, there may be times in my life when I am "gay in attraction, but not in action".
As you can see, my history with LGBT is quite deep and detailed. I have been as deep as identifying as female, and I have been as far as seeking sex with male strangers. Yet, though I identify as ex-gay, I do not identify as ex-trans. Though I have been through very real gender identity issues, I refuse to identify as ex-trans. The reason for this is simple: When I went through that period of my life, I didn't know what I was doing. Do you think a 5 year old, who does not fully understand the function of their private parts, understands what it means to be the opposite sex? Do you think at 8 years old, I understood that being a woman is more than just pretty makeup and bras? Do you think at 10 years old, I fully understood the damage transgender surgery could do to my body? Do you think at 14, I understood the difference between an actress who has been trained to really look like she's enjoying herself with her makeup well done and the lighting well directed, and what actually goes on in the bedroom? Do you think I had any idea that at some future point in my life, I would learn to be comfortable with my own gender?
By the time I was entrenched in my gay identity, I knew what I was doing. I didn't understand the moral implications, but I was fully aware of what it meant to be sexually active with other men. I may have been below the age of consent when I began to identify with it, but at the height of my homosexuality, I was legally old enough to participate. Thus, I can identify as ex-gay, because I was gay, I knew what I was doing, I am no longer gay.
But when I was at the height of my gender confusion, I did not understand any of what I was doing. At that age, I wasn't even old enough to drink a beer, get a tattoo, leave school, get a job, have sex, or even have access to the porn I was using. Therefore, how can I identify as ex-trans? I was a child.
And that's the point of this article. I. Was. A. Child. I didn't understand the implications of my feelings or my actions. I didn't understand what such irreversible surgery would do to me. I didn't even know it was irreversible. Or that I'd need to back it up with hormone therapy (which is also damaging). If we don't let children get tattoos, where is the logic in saying it's "transphobic" to deny them puberty blockers? I do not speak as an ex-transgender, but I speak as an ex-child who struggled with gender identity issues: Offering something as simple as a puberty blocker to a child is child abuse, and that is nowhere near transphobic to say.
I repent of everything I have confessed to today. I repent of rejecting my gender. I repent of homosexuality. I repent of the porn. And I will have a lot of repenting to do in the future, for scripture says "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." (1 John 1:8). Because of this, it would be the height of hypocrisy to hate members of the LGBT community. That's whether they're fellow Christians struggling more with same sex attraction than I currently do, or even if they're flamboyantly and openly gay. But no matter your sexuality, it should be easy to agree that children need to be protected from making life altering decisions they may (and given the statistics on how many kids grow out of gender identity problems, very likely will) grow out of. Both the laws of God and the laws of nature tell us that you just don't mess with children. And it isn't transphobic to say so.