Last December, I received an early Christmas present that I would have rejected just one year earlier: an “M” for “male” on my driver’s license.
The switch back to male marked
the end of a long journey of gender confusion and self-deception. Along the way
I became a transgender activist and then America’s first legally non-binary person.
By Christmas Eve 2019, I was
done with the lies. By God’s grace, a Portland judge granted my petition to
legally restore my sex to male.
This has been a five-year
ordeal. I first rose to become a transgender activist in 2015, telling The New York Times: “I now live in a
world where radical, conservative politicians and religious groups routinely
attack my very existence with legislation to deny me basic human rights such as
a bathroom that matches my gender-identity.”
New to identifying as a woman at that stage of my life,
but indoctrinated by the peddlers of transgender ideology to believe I was one,
I incorrectly believed that gaining access to female bathrooms was a human
rights issue for me.
I was wrong. In hindsight, it was all part of a selfish
quest to nourish my long-held sexual fantasy of being a woman—a mental disorder
called autogynephilia.
Although my landmark court case was built on lies,
deceit, and pseudoscience, I didn’t care. It didn’t matter to me that the sex
change petition fictitiously claimed my sex was non-binary and got two doctors
to say so.
It didn’t matter to me that before the brief hearing,
which lasted mere minutes, my lawyer had confided that the case was essentially
fixed, that the judge had a transgender child and had recently granted a sex
change for a 12-year-old.
None of that mattered, because winning meant getting
sweet revenge against those who I’d come to believe were harming me and
stopping me from engaging in my addiction—the feminists, and conservative
Christians.
Fine, I thought to myself back then. If all these
parties don’t want me in female bathrooms, then I’ll help destroy the very
thing they want to protect: The definition of sex as we’ve known it for over
200 years in America.
When I was finished, sex was no longer grounded to
science by things like chromosomes and genitals observed at birth. It was
determined by personal feelings rooted in what I would later come to realize
were sex stereotypes.
It wasn’t lost on me that if I won the case and had my
sex declared as non-binary (neither male nor female), and had that codified
into law, then bathrooms would subsequently have to be made gender-neutral.
People who are hurt end up hurting people, so at the
time I didn’t care if my actions were detrimental to women and young girls.
In my mind, by winning the case, I was sticking it to
those radical feminists who had refused to accept me as one of them. Being
legally no longer classified as female meant this vicious group of women could
no longer accuse me of appropriating womanhood and being a caricature of a
female—even if that was true (and it was).
Likewise, I intended to take revenge on the Christians,
another group that had antagonized me since I’d begun donning a wig and dress
and acting out sexually in public.
I didn’t know much about the Bible back then, but I
knew enough to know they cherished its teaching about how God created only male
and female. So I vowed to destroy that sacred belief.
Going
‘Nonbinary’
When I officially “broke” the gender binary, the media
circus was spectacular. Media outlets from as far away as Germany cheered me on, celebrating my
victory and embracing me as their latest LGBT hero.
Before long, states were debating whether to recognize
up to 73
gender identities, and gender
activists testified
about how those false-identities rooted in mere feelings were valid and real.
For me, the celebration went on for months as I
entertained reporters with tales of how I was the third gender: a special combination of male
biology and a female gender identity.
Of course, it was all a complete delusion, but
journalists ate it up. Not once did they question me. And above all, I believed
it. Having an official “X” marker on my driver’s license served as validation
from the government that I was, indeed, nonbinary.
The X marker is supposed to mean “sex unspecified
or indeterminate,” but that’s not what I or any of the other people
getting the designation believe about ourselves. At birth, my correct sex was
easily determinable by the male genitals I have always possessed.
Today, back to my senses and having legally reclaimed
my male birth sex, I recognize the damage I’ve done. But my return to sanity
and embrace of my male sex have caused the cheering on the left to fall silent.
Even more importantly, though, I’ve taken
responsibility for the harm I have caused, for the millions of dollars spent to
advance the fraud that I shamefully participated in. In church and public, I
confessed my sins, and humbled myself before the Lord, pleading for Him to lift
me up.
As a result, the Lord has lifted me, and I’m now
getting the help I should have gotten all along.
Setting the
Record Straight
In April 2019, the Department of Veterans Affairs
reluctantly agreed to diagnose me with a sexual paraphilia, the true cause
behind my previous sexual confusion. And in December, despite my past and who I
had been, a Christian legal organization agreed to help me change my sex back
to male.
On Dec. 12, a Portland attorney
submitted a new sex change petition on my behalf to the very court that
had once declared my sex as non-binary.
In the documents, we asked for reclamation of the male
birth sex that I was correctly observed to be at birth, and for the restoration
of the precious name given to me by my parents.
After receiving the news that
the petition was successfully filed, I prayed. Others joined me in prayer,
asking the Lord for speedy success in our endeavor. And within just a short
time our prayers were answered.
In only a week, a more competent judge signed the order,
ending the legal fiction behind the fraud that had allowed an X marker on
drivers licenses in over a dozen states.
On Dec. 24, a courthouse clerk deposited the signed and
notarized court order declaring my sex male and my name James Clifford Shupe
into the postal system, with a destination of my new home state of Florida.
President Ronald Reagan taught me as a young soldier to vote with my feet, so I did, leaving Oregon with the intention of sending a clear message that I wouldn’t be party to the mutilation of children that goes on there under the guise of gender therapy.
Moving Forward
I’m often asked what has prompted my turnabout and
conversion to Christ.
The answer lies in the 12 steps of Alcoholics
Anonymous, which also apply to other addictions, such as my compulsive sexual
behavior.
I have admitted that I am powerless over my mental
illness and transvestic disorder. I have accepted that my life has become
unmanageable and that only a power greater than myself can restore me to
sanity. And I have made a conscious decision to turn my will and my life over
to the care of God as I understand Him.
During my long journey of first identifying as a female
and then later non-binary, I’ve walked among the many drug and alcohol-addicted
homeless people sleeping on the streets of the West Coast each night. I’ve
abused my flesh in Portland sex clubs, BDSM dungeons, and adult theaters. I’ve
harmed my body with cross-sex hormones and risky sexual behaviors. And I’ve
dishonored my wife and my marriage vows with inexcusable transgressions, of
which there are many.
It took seeing and experiencing all of that destruction
and recognizing the harms of it for me to finally understand that Christianity
builds stronger families, safer communities, and most importantly, a better
nation.
Like the Apostle Paul, my past actions of harming
Christians, and in my case also harming women and girls by entering their
bathroom space, will always humble me before women, the American public, and
the Lord.
Similarly, like Paul, I too will carry an irremovable
thorn in my flesh. Biblical scholars are unable to agree about the type of
thorn Paul carried, but for me, it is a transvestic disorder with
autogynephilia—a mental disorder I will battle for the remainder of my days.
Will I stumble and fall, or relapse again as we call it in recovery? Maybe—and to be honest, I already have. Going into my detransition, I set an unrealistic goal of perfection for myself, throwing away all of my women’s clothing and vowing to never cross-dress or act out sexually again.
That proved to be disastrous because as my testosterone
quickly returned, I soon relapsed into another bout of stockpiling female
garments.
But no relapse like this means that I or any other male
with this mental disorder is female.
Some Christians have compared my circumstances to Norma
McCorvey, the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade who later became a pro-life advocate.
In my non-binary court case, I lied about not being
male. Similarly, McCorvey lied about being sexually assaulted. And in both
cases, a loophole in state law was exploited to advance destructive medical
practices. In Texas, for McCorvey, it was the right to get an abortion. For me
in Oregon, it was the right to change your sex.
Both of our court cases then went on to unleash
something monstrous.
Like McCorvey, because of the magnitude of my misdeeds
and the amount of damage done, I sought forgiveness in the only place capable
of bestowing forgiveness: the loving arms of Jesus.
Should I relapse, the correct response for others would
be to promptly get me help. Civilly commit me if necessary, if the relapse has
progressed to self-harm. But do not, under any circumstances, indulge my past
delusions or new ones.
In Christ, I am a new creation. “The old has gone; the
new has come.”
Source material can be found at this site.
