As with way too many things in life, I’m confused and frustrated with the way things are, with the way people are. I know that people are confused and afraid and distrusting of things that are different from them — by belief, by nature, by choice. What confuses me is why, and why more people don’t make the concerted effort to overcome that basic human trait.

SCOTUS declared yesterday that marriage as a legal entity (with the legal benefits that it provides) can not be denied to anyone based on their sexual orientation. To my knowledge, it hasn’t been stated that any of the religions have to redefine marriage, or that any minister, pastor, reverend, rabbi, or any other religious leader will be forced to perform a ceremony wedding two people in a manner that disagrees with their beliefs. It simply says that there can be no law denying marriage and its benefits to anyone, straight or gay.

My religious friends and family that object to this ruling continue to repeat a thought along the lines of, “The Court has redefined marriage, contrary to what Christians believe it is.” First and foremost, if this is true, then certainly, SCOTUS made the correct ruling, as:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

My interpretation of that is that there would be no laws related in any way to religious beliefs, including marriage (my bachelor’s degree notwithstanding, I’m clearly no legal scholar, so I’m open to being corrected by someone who knows better). And what SCOTUS did yesterday, contrary to some beliefs, was NOT to create a law redefining marriage; anyone with an elementary knowledge of the U.S. government can point out that the judicial branch can not make laws, only rule on them; quite the contrary, SCOTUS only said that laws preventing gay men and women from marrying are unconstitutional.

I take issue, too, with the fact that Christians are speaking as though their definition of marriage is the only one, ignoring the fact that there are different definitions of marriage for different religions and cultures, and that marriage, as an institution, predates Christianity (and Judaism, for that matter). This stance, while it may hold true for a vast majority of Americans, is still arrogant and unfair.

But really, I guess the bottom line is this: why does anyone — ANYONE — care? There’s this atmosphere of horror surrounding the whole thing, as though this is the beginning of the end, or that tomorrow, there will be armed soldiers knocking on their door and forcing them to marry their best friend. But none of these things are true, or have any grounding in any truth, at all.

My understanding of Christianity — and again, I’m not as well versed as many of my friends, but I have spent a lifetime learning and questioning and exploring, so I feel comfortable publicly stating my opinion — is that no sin is greater than any other. It’s a tough pill to swallow, that having wanton thoughts about your neighbor’s wife is no better or worse in the eyes of God than wholesale genocide, but that’s what is put forth – not directly, but it can be inferred from verses like the following:

James 2:10 (NIV)

For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.

And then there are the words of Christ Himself:

Matthew Chapter 22

³⁶Master, which [is] the great commandment in the law?

³⁷Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

³⁸This is the first and great commandment.

³⁹And the second [is] like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

⁴⁰On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Now, I’m not particularly interested in getting into religious debates. There are many, many levels on which I am still exploring and learning and discovering my faith, and I’m definitely sure that I’ve had more than my fill of being the audience to too many people presenting me their (or worse, a spoon-fed) opinion of what’s right and wrong as though it were fact carved in stone. But I will say that I find Jesus’ teachings — the words that came from the mouth of the man Himself, even presuming that they are subject to having been changed and revised over the last two millenia — to be the most important part of Christianity for me, with the Old Testament laws a distant second. Christ spoke, at the core, of love — for our fellow humans, regardless of profession or behavior or belief; and for God and His love for us.

There’s also this idea that this decision, and the new-found right to marry will be somehow detrimental to society as a whole, but I think that’s nothing more than fear speaking. You know what’s detrimental to society? Families where one parent or the other has abandoned the family. The ease of divorce. Our cultural glorification of violence and our quickness to show anger and hatred and to deny happiness and love. We choose to focus on the differences between ourselves and others rather than embracing our commonalities. We push the less-fortunate down and create as much distance as possible between us and them instead of doing all that we can to lend them a hand and help them rise closer to our station.

It is my opinion — and only that, an opinion — that those who are decrying the right of gay people to marry, preaching to anyone who will listen that it’s the end of the world as we know it because two men or two women who have love in their hearts for each other can now enjoy the same legal right and benefits as a man and a woman with the same are the real detriment to society.

I can’t understand why we can’t, as a people, just live and let live, when the actions and beliefs of others do us no more harm than make us uncomfortable, because we’re too lazy to try and understand differences better.