Op-ed written for the February 6, 2007, issue of the campus newspaper, The Observer.
I was born left-handed. For as long as I can remember, I've instinctively reached for things with my left hand. There was never any choice on my part, and I've certainly never felt any guilt for what I was doing. Though most of us nowadays are unaware of it, left-handedness has an ancient history of being looked upon as, well, sinister; in fact, the Latin adjective sinister means "left", as does the German adjective link(s), with its variant linkisch, which carries the meaning "awkward or gauche"--and of course gauche is French for both "left" and "crude or awkward." A number of other languages show similar overlap between left-handedness and inappropriateness. I have no need, however, to feel threatened by the deep-rooted but now antiquated derogation of my propensity to favor left over right. These days it's totally OK to be left-handed.
I also happened to be born gay. As with my sinistrality, there was never any choice involved. If God designed me to be left-handed, He certainly created me gay as well. As with left-handedness, the history of intolerance against gay people is long and abundant. The difference, of course, is that this particular age-old prejudice is still relatively robust, even in today's world. In many circles it's not OK to be gay. Those of us who are gay have every right (!) to feel affronted, even angry, when the Catechism calls any expression of mutual sexual love between same-gendered persons "intrinsically disordered," though that's a pretty meek tag compared to the labels other religious groups--and individuals--attach to us. And for some utterly inscrutable reason, the homophobes, religiously motivated or otherwise, really do seem convinced that we've "chosen" our sexual "preference." Do they ever stop to ask themselves: who in his right mind would choose--eagerly? voluntarily? masochistically?--to endure the contempt and indeed the violence that have historically followed gay people?
It's natural for humans to favor those who are similar and to disfavor those who are different from us. Most of us are right-handed and most of us are straight; left-handed and gay are not the norm, in any society. Thus the former enjoy approbation, and the latter are seen as abnormal. Yet our shared (and essentially innocuous) human proclivity to associate with those similar to us takes on an altogether different, and far more menacing, dimension when the self-appointed moralists in our midst claim divine authority for their views. How I live out my sexuality--with what degree of justice, honesty, compassion and responsibility--is certainly a valid moral question. But that I am born with a same-sex propensity is, in my view, inherently no more a legitimate moral concern than is left-handedness. The Catechism asserts that homosexual acts entail "grave depravity," and claims that they lack "genuine affective and sexual complementarity." The utter failure of Catholic teaching authority to substantiate this contention has been abundantly documented by scholars on our own faculty. Furthermore, the Catechism claims to base its condemnation of homosexuality on "sacred scripture"--despite the fact that the scriptural basis for that nexus is astonishingly flimsy and thoroughly predicated upon a selective reading of the Bible.
For one thing, Jesus Himself says not a single word about homosexuality--and precious little about sexuality in general. To be sure, Saint Paul inveighs against homosexuality (Romans 1:26-27), and the Old Testament contains its own condemnations (Leviticus 18:22 et al.) of men lying together with men. Yet do we pay any heed, at this juncture in history, when, to cite but one example among a host of such passages, Saint Paul instructs (Ephesians 6:5-9) slaves to be obedient to their masters? For most of us, such biblical injunctions merely represent long outdated societal antiquities. We overlook them and happily don't permit their presence in the New Testament to detract from the essential message of Jesus. Instead, they remind us that ultimately the Bible was written down by human beings whoinevitably carried with them the baggage of their times. And indeed, I would humbly suggest that anyone who sees this through a strictly literalist lens might want to think twice before sitting down to that yummy lobster dinner (proscribed in Leviticus 11: 9-12) or before donning the cotton-and-wool-blend sweater (banned in Deuteronomy 22:11) that was under this year's Christmas tree.
Jesus doesn't speak of sinistrality either. (He really seems to have eschewed the petty trivialities over which His small-minded latter-day disciples and interpreters so often obsess.) Yet the Bible is hardly silent on the issue. Not only do the righteous (!) sit repeatedly at the right hand of God, we are also told (Matthew 25: 33 and 41): "And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. [...] Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." Luckily, I never encountered this terrifying condemnation when I was a vulnerable child first learning to write--with my left hand! In all, there are about 1600 biblical allusions to the hand, and the overwhelming majority speak favorably of the right hand whenever a moral distinction is being made.
Still, despite such (in this case) quite compelling textual evidence, our religious institutions choose not to make an issue of sinistrality. Nor do the "theocons", who normally show every propensity to cherry-pick biblical verse for sociopolitical gain. Someday our society's vilification of gays will go the way of our archaic disparagement of left-handedness: little more than an antiquated curiosity of history. I have no doubt of that. Though we haven't yet reached that day of enlightenment, I find it nothing less than breathtaking to be alive in an age when that goal is at least in sight, even if at times only dimly so.
Michael Resler, Professor and Chair of the German Studies Dept.
