The Latin word for left is Sinister. The Latin word for right is Dexter (Dexterous). I am left-handed. None of my three siblings are left-handed. I did not choose to be left-handed. I just AM totally and completely left-handed.
In our world, there are a number of significant drawbacks to being left-handed, and if I have been given the choice, I would have not chosen it. Unless you determined to be a first baseman in baseball, the drawbacks far outweigh the benefits. The most obvious is that it is almost impossible for anyone who is left-handed to have their handwriting be legible. We would much prefer to write from right to left than left to right. Leonardo DaVinci was left-handed and to solve this problem, he simply wrote everything in his notebooks backwards.
Medline makes the following observation about being handedness.
The right hemisphere controls movement on the left side of the body, while the left hemisphere controls movement on the right side of the body. It was initially thought that a single gene controlled handedness. However, more recent studies suggest that multiple genes, perhaps up to 40, contribute to this trait.
The history of persecution for being left-handed is shocking, given that we now recognize it as just a particular set of genes that control it and given that a significant number of Presidents have been left-handed (e.g. Truman, Ford, Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton, Obama).
In May of 2020 Nicol Valentin wrote in “Lessons from History” an article entitled The Long History of Left-Handed Persecution. In it she observes that, “Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909) is considered by many the father of criminology. He held to the theory that left-handers were not just losers, they were ‘primitive and abnormal’ and thus more disposed to crime.” She adds that, “The noted psychologist Theodore Blau (1928–2003) said left-handed children — or sinister children as he called them — were academically and behaviorally challenged.”
I have dealt with my left-handedness as best I can, but it serves as a constant reminder to me about personal choice. I chose to love carpentry and pole vaulting, but not my left-handedness.
When the son of a close family friend came out to his mother as being gay years ago, one of his comments was, “Mom, I never would have chosen to be gay. I just am.”
It is obvious that we need to be open and accepting everyone who has no choice in the very fundamental aspects of their being. It is just as unjust to harbor ill will towards those in the LGBTQ community as it was to persecute those who were born left-handed in days past.
