Laura Beth Perry Leaves Transgender Life: ‘God Has Done A Redemptive Work In Me’
By Movieguide® Staff
Laura Beth Perry recently recalled her journey from living as a transgender man named “Jake,” to finding her true identity in Christ.
After living as Jake for nine years, Perry’s story of de-transition was actually one of spiritual salvation and restoration through a relationship with Jesus Christ.
“Over the years, [I was] believing a lot of lies,” Perry told Faithwire in a recent interview. “It started really early.”
“I finally thought … ‘The reason I’m never happy is because I was supposed to be the man,'” she added. “And I had been in porn for years … and that was feeding this fantasy.”
Perry’s struggle to find identity persisted, and in 2007 she decided to transition.
“I started with hormones, began to grow facial hair, and my voice began to get a lot lower,” Perry said. “And the more people affirmed me, the more I began to believe that.”
Despite her newfound acceptance in a community of transitioners, Perry said she “knew it was fake.”
Although her parents refused to call her “Jake,” Perry said they remained a testimony of Christ’s love.
“I knew they loved me deep down … it was frustrating to me,” she said. “But they were such a testimony to me of Christ because they would say, ‘I love you.'”
Perry said that she “rejected God” and even prayed to Satan during her search for identity.
“There were times in high school that I was praying to Satan, asking Satan to keep people from coming to know Jesus,” she said.
But after Perry committed to more and more noticeable changes to her body, she said that questions arose deep within her about if what she was doing was truly making her happy.
“A little bit of doubt started sneaking in after my chest surgery … there was this realization that it hadn’t made me man, and I felt so stupid,” she explained. “I was like, ‘Why did I think cutting off the breasts was going to make me a man?'”
“I had a hysterectomy and had all the ovaries removed,” she continued. “Well, that still didn’t fix it. I just realized with horror that I was never going to be a man, no matter what I did. I started to realize … I could have this outer appearance of a man, everyone could think I was a man, but I knew the truth inside.”
Perry likened her attitude towards her transition to Romans 1, “where it says, ‘They suppressed the truth in unrighteousness.’ I knew the truth the whole time, but I was constantly trying to override it.”
Out of work, Perry agreed to work on a website for her mother’s Bible study, which opened her up to a new community.
“God began to reveal himself through this,” Perry said and added that she looked into the Christian faith for herself after her mother’s conversion.
“I gave my life to the Lord,” she said. “When the Holy Spirit started to get a hold of me, the whole Bible was telling me I couldn’t be transgender.”
However, accepting her identity in Christ and her female gender was difficult for Perry.
“It’s such a messy process,” she recalled. “It was such a painful difficult journey. I can’t even describe what I went through.”
“Over the years, God peeled away the layers of all the lies, all the pain,” she added. “I began to let go of all the bitterness. As he peeled away [at] me like an onion and got to the core of who I was … all that had faded away.
“It was a long journey and a process of God redeeming and transforming me,” she continued. “God has completely transformed my life. I know what it’s like to believe there’s no way to change … God has done a redemptive work in me that I never could have dreamed possible.”
Perry’s story comes amid the media’s push for normalizing transgender issues.
As Movieguide® previously reported:
The LGBTQ community expressed their anger over a recent 60 MINUTES segment on CBS that highlighted the stories of detransitioners and the danger of transgender medicalization.
Detransitioners are individuals who abandoned their transgender identity and want to live as their biological sex.
The segment comes after the promotion of several state legislations that would prohibit and restrict experimental medications and cosmetic gender surgery on minors.
CBS’s coverage of the issue could mark a shift in the transgender debate.
“I didn’t get enough pushback on transitioning. I went for two appointments and after the second one, I had my letter to go get on cross-sex hormones,” said a young man named Garrett from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Garrett continued by saying that while many transgender advocates claim that the lack of an opportunity to transition results in higher suicide rates, he experienced more severe depression post-surgery.
“I had never really been suicidal before until I had my breast augmentation,” Garrett said. “And about a week afterward, I wanted to actually kill myself. I had a plan and I was going to do it but I just kept thinking about my family to stop myself.”
Grace Lidinsky-Smith, who transitioned and detransitioned in less than one year, noted that her change in identity made her question who she was as a human rather than giving her assurance.
“I can’t believe I transitioned then detransitioned, including hormones and surgery, in the course of like, less than one year,” Lidinsky-Smith said. “[I] started to have a really disturbing sense that, like, a part of my body was missing, almost a ghost limb feeling about being like, there’s something that should be there.”
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