When California enacted a school secrecy pact last week, businessman Elon Musk responded with surprising intensity. The law, which would require school personnel to lie to parents about their child’s gender identity, as The Washington Stand reported, was “the final straw” for Musk, who announced plans to relocate his businesses’ headquarters to Texas (Tesla’s headquarters relocated to Texas in 2021, but now SpaceX and X are set to follow).

Those were the facts as reported last week, but they lacked a satisfactory explanation — they didn’t seem to fit Musk’s character. The sudden declaration would be expected from a conservative culture warrior — a Pat Buchanan acolyte perhaps, or an explicitly strident investment firm like Strive Asset Management. By contrast, Musk made his fortune pioneering electric vehicles, before turning to private spaceship construction, and eventually acquiring a social media giant — not the standard portfolio for a conservative culture warrior. Beyond all that, one does not become the world’s richest man by making dramatic, seemingly impulsive business decisions without an apparent profit motive.

The facts were there, but the question remained: How does a liberal businessman from Silicon Valley transform into a culture warrior against transgender ideology?

Musk supplied the answer in an interview with Jordan Peterson published yesterday.

When asked why he is willing to make an issue of gender ideology, Musk replied, “It happened to one of my older boys.” During the COVID confusion, he explained, “I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my older boys, Xavier,” to obtain puberty blockers. “This is before I had any understanding of what was going on,” he added, “and I was told Xavier might commit suicide if he doesn’t.” Musk added, “It wasn’t explained to me that puberty blockers are essentially sterilization drugs.”

Musk’s oldest surviving child — one of his twins conceived through IVF — officially changed his name to a feminine one the day after turning 18. He also took his mother’s last name to avoid being associated with Musk.

“So, I lost my son, essentially,” mused Musk. “They call it ‘deadnaming’ for a reason. The reason they call it that is that your son is dead. So my son Xavier is dead, killed by the woke mind virus. … So I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that.”

Musk clearly loves his children, 11 of whom survived infancy. And it seems losing one of his children to a destructive ideology turned an otherwise neutral businessman into a combatant.

This is the story of countless parents who lack the fame, fortune, or platform of Elon Musk. “There’s lots of people in that situation now,” Peterson responded. “It’s not pretty. And lots of demolished kids.”

Ending the provision of harmful gender transition procedures to minors is a popular, commonsense position with growing momentum. The number grows daily of parents and detransitioners who experience Musk’s revulsion against these horrors and are mobilized against them. Protecting children in this way is a good, moral, and just hill to die on, although the growing support indicates stalwart defenders of this hill may not die there after all. While the 2024 Republican platform unfortunately omits this issue, it is consistent with other policy priorities and worth the fight.

While a loving father and an ally to conservative Christians on the issue of gender transition procedures to minors, readers should be under no illusion that Musk’s political journey has been accompanied by a religious conversion, nor that he is socially conservative across the board. In the same interview, Musk called himself a “cultural Christian” like Richard Dawkins. He said that “the teachings of Jesus are good and wise” and called forgiveness “essential,” but he also put caveats around the teaching of Scripture and said he is “not a particularly religious person.”

But Jesus did not allow people to think of him merely as a good and wise teacher. Jesus claimed to be God. If Jesus’s claim was true, then he must be worshiped as Lord. If it was false, then Jesus ought to be considered a liar and a charlatan, no proper source of ethical wisdom.

Essentially, Musk admires Christian teaching, but he has not received it for himself. In his personal life, Musk is unconstrained by a biblical worldview of human sexuality; he has divorced two women three times and has children by at least four different women. He remains on the outside looking in, unable to access the great benefits of Christianity, including eternal life, which are only available through faith in Jesus Christ and submission to him as Lord.

In the unlikely event that Mr. Musk ever reads this, I would urge him to continue thinking about the theme of forgiveness. In particular, I would urge him to consider his own need for forgiveness, not from any other human being, but from a holy creator God. I would urge him to reflect on his inability to earn that forgiveness, but also on the freedom with which it is offered in Christ.

In other words, I would urge Musk to believe in Christ, and I hope and pray that the only true God works to that effect in his heart. Socially conservative Christians are grateful for Musk’s aid in prosecuting a culture war against gender ideology, but we want something more for him — for his own good. We seek his eternal happiness and salvation, and we “have believed, and have come to know” (John 6:69) that such happiness and salvation can only be found through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. This is true for Musk, for every victim of gender ideology, and for every Christian too.