Gite OCT sexuality Issue le {fc uple {He Raised as a boy, Marjorie Hopper lived as a “transsexual homosexual” for years before finding her identity in Christ Maureen J. Bailey s I enter Marjorie Hoppers tiny, tidy A in the Burnaby Christian Fellow ship church, the slogan “Homosexuals Can Change...Ask Us!” shouts at me from one wall. Hopper, Director of Another Chance Ministries (ACM), is dressed casually, a double string of pearls peeking out from beneath her collar, Hopper is a born-again Christian and an ex- gay. Since 1989, she has directed ACM, a licensed referral agency of Exodus International. She is known for her ‘school, practically everyone she knew went along with his deceitful scheme, expecting her to behave as a boy. , Hopper lived up to their expectations. Although she hated her father, she imitated him. She used the boys’ washroom at school, was precocious with little girls, and did manly chores. Being tall and outdoorsy, and not at all curvaceous, made being a boy easy. It was an incident at age eleven, two years after her parents’ separation, that decided her attitude towards women. Young Marjorie stood by helplessly as a man violently raped her mother in the back seat of a expertise on the controversial Someone once asked car. From that time on, she subject of deliverance, ‘i pd vowed to become a gentle- healing and freedom from her, Marjorie, are man, to treat women, homosexuality. As she greets you going to marry?" especially her mother, with me, she is hurriedly editing a - respect and dignity. But press release for a conference Hopper replied, “No! when Hopper was only in early March at which she What do you think I thirteen, her mother is a featured speaker. “The issue of homosexu- am? Queer?” ality and the church is contentious,” she reads.aloud. “I don’t like that word. What’s another word for contentious?” she asks, her grade eleven education taxed to the limit. Hopper hungrily wolfs down a sub sandwich while she reads on. “I have to check every word,” she complains. “Why? We already know [the activists are] going to fight over them anyway.” Hopper was born in Digby, Nova Scotia, where the tides of 27 to 30 feet are the highest in the world. Figuratively speaking, she learned to flow with the tides early in life. Her father grieved the loss of two sons by.a previous failed marriage. Having reared no sons by Hopper’s mother, he angrily insisted his third daughter, Marjorie, be raised a boy. Her entire family, the committed suicide. A few years later, a psychiatrist counselled her that she was as much male as she ever could be, and to “find another woman.” What had previously been strictly a gender issue became a homosexual one. “T lived a double life,” she says. “At work—as a guard at women’s prisons, or at mental hospitals—I was female. At home I was male.” Hopper felt so strongly that she was male that she began taking hormones and contemplating a sex change operation. But a sex change was not to be. In the 50s and ’60s, the cost of the operation was $30,000, a major deterrent for Hopper. She couldn't afford it, despite sometimes holding three jobs continued on page 3 Press We've got it all: Transsexual homosexuals, porn, lesbian coaches, and giant blue bull testicles. But that's really only half the picture. There's more to sexuality than just sex (and lurid, eye- grabbing tabloid headlines, for that matter). This special Sexuality Supplement will take you places familiar and unfamiliar. Sports writer Hamish Knox muses on the current state of women's athletics; Maureen Bailey profiles Marjorie Hopper, in the proc- ess exploring the intriguing issue of gender identity; Jonathan Vansaten and “Peeping” Tom Laws deliver a glimpse of Vancouver's pornography industry; and Kevin Sallows tells a classic road-tale of two young men and their misadventure with Babe the blue ox. Like I said, we've got it all.