Freedom from Sexual brokenness: not through a method,
 but a person – the Lord Jesus Christ

TESTIMONY - PHILIPPINES
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FROM LIE TO LIFE
By Rene Gomez

It was a lifestyle primed for a promiscuous gay life. And I lived it to the hilt. It was the heady days of the seventies, the time when my generation was exploring everything that could bring prosperity and pleasure. I was an accredited fashion designer in my early twenties, one of the youngest belonging to the exclusive circle of Metro-Manila’s guild of clothes stylists. And that meant walking down the corridors of power – from diplomatic channels to the halls of Malacanang Palace. Then the First Lady would invite our elite group to help launch one of her hyped projects. There I lunched and dined with the country’s tycoons and diplomats which formed the core of my social circle. I might be moving with the celebrities of the country’s rich and famous, but I did not know who I was. For a while a part of me, that visible part, was highly successful in work and career. The other part, the hidden part, was enmeshed in homosexuality.

I was initiated to the homosexual world at age eleven when I gave in to my sixteen year-old troop leader’s urging to fondle him as he touched me. I had yet to understand what it was all about when my schoolmates in that exclusive boys school asked me to “play” with them, thinking it was a normal, regular part of being one of the boys – a routine I had to undergo. I did not know how to relate to my classmates. Unfortunately, my father died even before I was a year old. And my mother, not knowing well, decided to give me a stepfather whom I immediately rejected at the outset. I was very angry for his unwelcome intrusion in my life. The lack of having a father around or even a father figure took a heavy toll on me. Growing up with my aunts, female cousins and sisters developed in me a deep longing for a man to hold me in his arms and tell me he loved me.

I breezed through my collegiate studies and started to work and it was not until I reached my late twenties that I finally went wild. A late bloomer trying to recoup lost grounds. A colleague in the fashion industry brought me to a male brothel where I had my first “honest –to-goodness sex”, and that was the beginning of a two-decade promiscuous trek to homosexuality. I was ambitious, not only in career but also in romance. I wanted my guys to be the best – gorgeous, famous, intelligent and sought after. I dreamt of being a diplomat, but having failed on that (my uncle discouraged me, saying a gay cannot be in foreign service), I settled for the next best thing – a diplomat’s mistress! I was a ‘kept boy’ of about 5 diplomats and foreign industrialists. Talk about an international career!

To have a variety, I had various casual sex-encounters with fashion and commercial models, with their friends, and with their friends’ friends. With anybody my heart lusted after. And to make myself secure (this gay lifestyle was a series of insecurities I had to full), that indeed I was the pretty “woman’ these men desire, I joined a gay beauty contest and came out to be the oldest “Ms. Young International”. I was looking for a fatherly love and care I had never had and I thought I could find this in these men. The search was long and painful, but still in vain. I had it all – almost. But deep down inside I was empty and hurting. There was a great vacuum which, somehow, could not be filled despite the string of friends and male consorts who were at my beck and call. Nightly, coming home from each sexual encounter and heavy carousing, I ended up depressed, miserable and crying for attention. But no one really cared. I usually cried my heart out before an unknown supernatural being I called “god”.

But I did not know where else to go. My hedonistic pursuits continued. Until one morning in the summer of 1984 I woke up, jolted and as if almost saying, “Stop the world, I want to get off.” I did not know what was happening. All of a sudden, I did not care anymore about dreams and commitment. As I look back now, I believe that was the day the Lord decided to bail me out of the rut I was in. I began to implement changes. Drastic changes. From ‘wall street’ I moved to outskirts not advising anybody so that even my closest friends did not know what hit them. Consequently, communication with the fashion scene was severed. Strangely, however, I did not miss any of my coterie, nor the activities I was often engaged in. It was during this period of recluse that I started being exposed to the gospel for the first time. I responded to the invitation to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour, when I ‘chanced upon’ the 700 Club (or was it divine appointment?). I received Jesus Christ in submission and with all the humility I could muster.

God patiently molded me for three years, beating my pride to a pulp and discarding all other displeasing traits that go with a gay lifestyle. God broke Satan’s chains of deception and bondage over me. My eerie fantasy for the same sex came to a miraculous halt. He assured me of His faithful love and met my genuine need to belong. The longing for a man initially diminished and then was met constructively by Christian brothers until there was nothing erotic left for a man to fulfil. I admit I am still undergoing a process of perfection and refinement. A continuous process of making right, albeit, difficult choices. In a ministry like ours, temptations abound but if we know who we are before our Creator, we can choose, not without difficulty, to stay on course.

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Vin's Story

I am often asked if I already felt I was different—had I felt feminine from childhood? Initially, I did not feel different,
did not see anything wrong with me. But ever since I could remember, it was the people around me—my family, my relatives, and my friends—who insisted that I was different, maybe because of my effeminate gestures. "Bakla ka kasi, eh (You're gay, that's why)!" They would tease me. I would often look at myself in the mirror, wondering what made them say such things when I looked essentially the same as everybody else—two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, two hands, two feet.

 Whatever resistance I had against such harsh conditioning was destroyed when I was sexually molested by our houseboy when I was five. As if that wasn't bad enough, I was molested again by a 19-year-old male cousin, took me to bed with him when I was 9. This made me feel good because someone gave me loving attention. As the wrong relationship progressed, this cousin treated me with contempt just like everybody else. Yet, I could not hate him for it because he was the only one to whom I seemed to matter, even perversely. I could not stand being alone again.

       To withstand the confusion brought about by my life-situations, which I could not explain, at that point, I believed God made a mistake. I had to be a girl.

On March 11, 1986, at twenty-four years old, I underwent a sex change operation. As I was one of the first Filipino male to undergo such a highly controversial procedure here in the Philippines, it naturally merited much media attention My story and my pictures were all over the newspapers and magazines. My operation gave way to the birth of the new me, the woman named Vinna. . I got what I wanted, had a husband named Steve, and lived abroad.

One sleepless night, I turned on the television and tuned in to the program that was being aired. It was "The 700 Club." Part of the show featured people who went through dramatic changes in their lives after a spiritual awakening. If only for that, I became a faithful follower of the program. Somehow, watching the show became a coping mechanism for me, because for the first time, after feeling so alone and so singular, I could identify with others who, like me, had undergone major changes in life.  My six-years living with Steve did not work out either so it came to an end as I returned to the Philippines.

          I consulted people and priest, attending one bible study after another. At the same time, being successful in my career, I was determined for society to change its perception of my kind, that we had the right to exist just as we were.

In November 1996, together with some friends from church, I attended Don Moen's Praise and Worship concert. At one point during the singing, I felt very strongly the presence of the Holy Spirit. Everybody in the congregation was singing the chorus of a song when suddenly I heard a loud sound of a trumpet. I knew that it did not come from the band playing on stage. The sound was of a different tone, so different that it rose above the music being played. I asked my friends if they heard something different with the music but they said no. I cried out to the Lord for I knew it was Him talking to me, commanding me to let go of something I had been holding on tightly in my hands up to that time.

          After months of continuous bible studies, I learned about how God was pleased with Abraham’s faith in giving up Isaac, his son, who was most precious to him. As I read verse by verse, there was so much pain in my heart as if I was Abraham giving away what was also precious to me - the sham of my womanhood. I was willing to sacrifice anything to God, but how?

          It was time for the change that had transpired inside me to manifest on the outside. What took place after that was in total obedience to the Lord and as a response to His great love for me. I went to a salon and had a man's haircut. I stopped putting on make-up and I started wearing men's apparel. I stopped taking hormone pills and I even went to the extent of having my hourglass-shaped body undergo surgery to try to remedy its feminine shape. In other words, I started looking, living and behaving the way I was originally created to be. Sad to say, some of the alterations I had made to my body were irreversible and complete restoration to normalcy was impossible. Moreover, my decision to stop taking hormone pills has meant enduring the effects of hormonal imbalance. There have been major consequences to face but they do not stop me from actively pursuing God's will and purpose for me.

 But, I often wonder why all these things in my life had to happen. As I continue to face realities from my childhood traumas, I begin to understand that the true essence of Christ ministry is in forgiveness. Pain confronts pain. Who says forgiving is easy? But if I do not start now, I would never find out how it gets better as I master the craft.

Facing and accepting the facets of my hurts brought by people and situations in my life, I have learned to consciously let go and forgive each detail of all my grief to get to the root and be healed by the loving grace of Jesus Christ. Learning to identify the pain sets a target to change it to good. Most of the time the process is unbearable but what I look forward after an episode, is the victory I receive after the trial. I believe there is no complete healing until the end of our lives. Struggles will pop-up and a lot of times it will be unexpected. Though it is messy and unpredictable at times, the assurance that I have victoriously passed my greatest struggle of all, my “Identity Crisis”, gives me a head start to fulfill the core of relationships and that is love. Love is unconditional. It is almost impossible to truly love with bitterness in my heart.

Everyday is a battle, but everyday I come home to the loving arms of my God to experience His abounding love, grace, strength, peace, and joy. Jesus is all I need. I cannot and will not trade that for anything else in this world.

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