From Lesbianism to Complementarianism

By: American Decency Staff

He wanted to watch wrestling; I wanted to watch the Food Network.

As we both raced to grab the remote, in hopes of having first dibs on our entertainment for the evening, I lost the battle. So I grabbed his arm, pulling and tugging as hard as I could, trying to pry the remote out of his hand—a hand much larger and an arm much stronger than my own. I continued to fight for the remote until I realized that, no matter how hard I tried, I was not stronger than him.

He was a man, and I was a woman. We were both human, yet very different in how we were built—and I HATED IT.

The “War of the Remote” is a trivial story, but it was for me a very new experience that sparked my journey to complementarianism.

THE ROOTS OF MY LESBIANISM

Seven months prior to my short-lived relationship with the guy who won the battle over the remote, I was a lesbian. My long black hair neatly tied into a ponytail. My jeans sagging just enough to show off the boxer briefs I wore faithfully. My white t-shirt covering the breasts that I worked diligently to keep flat, lest I look too much like the woman God made me. And beneath it all lay a soul that God died to save.

Born with an inherent disposition to sin mixed with fatherlessness, molestation, and limited-to-no examples of trustworthy men led me into a lifestyle of homosexuality. It was a way of life I willingly embraced. My style of dress and behavior was somewhat indicative of my personality. A girly-girl could never be used to describe Jackie. An aggressive tom-boy was more like it. Therefore, the girls I attracted were typically everything that allowed me to become what I thought I wanted to secretly be: a man.

I always saw men as being something to envy. They seemed strong, powerful, in control. Femininity, or the skewed view of it that I held, seemed weak. Part of my embracing masculinity and rejecting femininity was my own way of protecting myself from pain—pain that I believed men were capable of subjecting me to. After all, that’s what my father did to me. That’s what I saw men do to my mother. That’s what I witnessed my guy friends do to the women they claimed to love. All I knew of men was that they used their manliness as a means to inflict pain. And us women—us “weak beings”—were target practice.

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