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.

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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.”. . .

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. . .

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.”

(Excerpt from The Daily Signal. Article by James Shupe.)