Gender journey reaches unhappy ending at church

The man spent thousands to look like a woman, then chose to become a man again.

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. (AP) — High on prescription drugs and four days without sleep, Michael Berke raced his Harley to the megachurch where he’d found a home.

He barged into the church office, wearing a mesh shirt printed with profanity. In his hands he held a picture of a curvy woman with long, red hair and pouty lips.

“This is who I used to be,” he said.

“And this” — he gestured to his flat chest, bald head and red goatee — “is who I’ve become.”

He was born a man. After a lifetime as a social misfit, he had transformed himself into Michelle, a saucy redhead. Then, three months ago, he had become Michael again — with the financial aid and spiritual encouragement of Calvary Chapel of Fort Lauderdale.

It has never been about sex. And the new clothes and 45 pairs of shoes were fun, but not fulfilling.

Berke wanted friendship — the kind women have.

He dreamed of shopping together and gossiping in the bathroom. “I always admired how girls can hold hands, girls can hug, cuddle, and there’s nothing abnormal about it. It’s not sexual,” he says. “The whole girl lifestyle is just so much more social and caring and loving and understanding.”

His life had not been a happy one. Kids at school teased him because he was different so he rebelled and often got in trouble.

Michael left home and a strained relationship with his parents at 19, living on the streets and flitting from job to job. He worked as a techie for Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson, followed by odd jobs at a veterinarian’s office, tanning salon and as a nail technician. He drank, used drugs.

Berke has never felt comfortable around men — he’s repelled by the angry, macho, emotionless male stereotype. He isn’t attracted sexually to men, either, and says he has never had sex with one.

In 2003, at age 39, he became Michelle.

He spent about $80,000, maxing out his credit cards on surgery and provocative women’s clothes. He got a nose job, brow lift and fat injections in his cheeks. His primary-care physician gave him hormones, and after a year he got breast implants.

Michael kept his penis; that surgery cost too much, and he still identified himself as a heterosexual. (He’s had relationships with women and says he’s still hoping to meet one with whom he could spend his life.)

The transformation was easy, a dream. He had few friends as Michael and no steady job, so there was no awkward explanation to co-workers.

“I was still the same person inside. Michelle was just the exterior,” Michael says.

She was depressed and suicidal and prone to cutting herself. She threw up her food trying to fit into her jeans, eventually dropping from a size 12 to a 7. She struggled with drugs and alcohol, just like Michael.

By 2005, Michelle had tried everything else, “so why not God?” A friend invited her to church.

An evangelical church with about 20,000 members — one of the largest in the state — Calvary Chapel has a local reputation for embracing the homosexual community. Its several homosexual and transgender participants are not allowed to serve in church leadership, but are welcome to attend services where a Bible-based message teaches sex is supposed to be reserved for marriage between a man and woman.

Many evangelical churches have evolved from fire and brimstone preaching against homosexuals and transgenders and now view those members as having a psychological illness much like depression — something that must be dealt with spiritually, says Dr. Melissa Wilcox, assistant professor of religion and director of gender studies at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash.

“The churches that only see it as sin would not be welcoming to someone like Michael at all,” said Wilcox, author of “Coming Out in Christianity: Religion, Identity, and Community.”

“It’s a way of living out their beliefs of you love the sinner and you hate the sin. Since the early ’90s that’s increasingly been the direction that a lot of evangelicals have moved in ... because it offers hope.”

Michelle loved the upbeat music and the feel-good sermons.

Everybody seemed so nice. They put her in a special women’s Bible study group, so Michelle would feel more comfortable. Her new friends showed her videos about a gay man who became a woman and then a man again, and married a woman with whom he had children and lived happily.

You can have that too, they said.

They said “you’ll be able to meet a wonderful woman and get married and that’s what pulled at my heartstrings because I really wanted that,” Michael recalls. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

By the time Michelle first met Calvary Chapel Pastor Bob Coy, she was self-conscious about the D-sized breasts she’d had for more than a year and had started wearing baggy men’s shirts to hide them.

During the altar call one Sunday, Berke found God. And several weeks later, Michelle told church leaders she wanted to become a man again.

Just like that, Michelle was gone, Michael says sadly.

The regrets came quickly.

Michael turned to the Bible and other theological books, but found more questions. He questioned the validity of the resurrection, and the belief that there was only one true religion.

Three months later he stopped going to church and started partying again. He downed handfuls of pills and chased them with vodka in what he said was a suicide attempt.

That’s when he rode his Harley back to the church and confronted the leadership. Michael, now 43, says he was cajoled into the decision to become a man again; he was the church’s “pet project.”

Coy says the church had no agenda with Michael. He asked. It helped.

“I’m aware of the legal ramifications and the spiritual ramifications if someone was forced to do anything,” Coy says.

“Anything that we have helped Michael with, he’s asked for. The hours of time that different leaders have spent pouring into his life ... .”

Like the time Michael bought a motorcycle and set it on fire. The church sent the bike ministry over to help. One of the guys even lent Michael his bike, says Huston.

“He goes in these waves where he goes from one emotional extreme to the other,” Huston says.

He says Michael was the one who asked for the surgery and pressed to have it done quickly.

“We encouraged him, but he initiated it,” Huston says.