Former drag queen, prostitute of 20 years shares how God restored identity as a man
A man who lived for 20 years as a transsexual prostitute and drag performer shared how God restored his identity as a man.
Testifying Saturday before those gathered for the Freedom March in Orlando, held at Lake Eola Park just a few minutes away from the Pulse nightclub — where in 2016 49 people were murdered in one of the worst mass shootings in the nation — Kevin Whitt was the last to share his story from the stage following hours of dynamic worship and testimonies of men and women who formerly lived and identified as LGBT.
The Freedom March-Orlando was hosted by Pulse nightclub shooting survivors Luis Javier Ruiz and Angel Colon.
Whitt, who hails from Dallas, recounted that he received Christ five and a half years ago but previously lived for 20 among the LGBT community. He started doing drag at age 16 and performing it at age 18; out of that life he began living as a woman named Dominique.
"I was raised in a very dysfunctional home, a broken home where my father was never around," he recounted, noting that when his father was around he was physically, verbally, and sometimes sexually abusive.
"I never felt like I measured up. I never was manly enough," he continued.
Thus, he decided to use his femininity for his own purposes. Though successful as a drag queen, he began prostituting as a transsexual woman, doing so for approximately 17 years.
"I slept with I don't know how many men. I tried to count one time and it was around the number of 5000 men. Because I turned about 5 tricks a day, 7 days a week, add that up over the years. It's a great [big] number."
Upon getting two tests for HIV, both of which came back negative, he said to himself: "There has to be a God."
From the outside things appeared glamorous.
Whitt auditioned for the television show RuPaul's Drag Race, his casting special was shown on television, and said he would have gotten onto the show the following season. He was going to do that but then he met the Lord.
He noted that throughout his entire life he struggled with gender confusion.
"I really never knew my true identity and I really never thought I could be a man because I never felt like I was what the world considered to be a man physically," he said.
Whitt went on to explain that he went to a gender therapist and was formally diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Yet whenever he would go in for an appointment he would tell the clinician that he had been sexually molested and abused. But that was ignored and he was reportedly told: "Well, you were supposed to be born a woman."
"I'm here to tell you," he continued, stressing, "I don't hate gay people. I love gay people. I have always loved gay people."
"I have never been through conversion therapy. I don't even know what conversion therapy is. And most of us don't even know how to define it because we don't know what that is. I assume electroshock therapy, but I don't think anybody here has been through that," he said, gesturing to those in attendance.
He added: "But what I did go through and who is my conversion therapist is Jesus Christ."
At an Easter service he gave his life to the Lord, started reading the Bible on his own, and he resolved to follow Christ.
"I now know that I'm a man," he said, speaking of how God restored his identity, "that God created me to be a man."
"And I may not be as masculine as the next man, and I might have a little residue from my past, but I am still a man."
Whitt now shares his story with legislators across the country and is now the outreach coordinator for Coming Out Inc., a ministry based in Dallas, Texas. He is in the process of writing a book called God Saved The Queen which is set to be released in January.
The first Freedom March took place in Washington, D.C. in May of 2018 and has spread to other cities. The marches feature worship and mostly young men and women who share their testimonies of leaving behind LGBT identities and lives to follow Jesus Christ.