This statement always raises two red flags for me. The first red flag is that I am a naturally left-handed person who was taught to eat and write with my right hand. I do them both well! In fact, calligraphy has been a hobby of mine. And I was formerly involved homosexually, with no heterosexual interest. That is no longer true. In neither case -- using my right hand, or enjoying heterosexual sex with my wife -- do I think that I am repressing something.

The second red flag is that Judges 19 tells of Benjamites who act out homosexually. The only left-handed man about whom the Bible speaks is Ehud, a Benjamite. Couple these with the observation (help me: I have misplaced the reference ...) that the incidence of homosexuality is statistically greater among left-handed men, and you have a mine-field of unassimilated data that I don't know what to do with yet!

Am I sinister or merely gauche? (To use the Latin and French words for left-handed respectively.)

I can only conclude, as gay academic Pim Pronk admits in his thorough dissertation, that a moral argument cannot be built on mere observations of variation. (Pronk)

2 September 1996. Copyright information is available.