You say that I trample upon your rights, and that I do it because I am homophobic. My ideas of right and wrong are no more than an invention designed to justify my interior repulsion either to you or to the acts with which you identify most.
Let's say, for a moment, that you're right. Let's leave aside thousands of years of intellectual tradition and say that the idea of an objective moral order is something I adopted simply to be able to say to you that I don't like your way of life. Why would I do it?
Why would I even bother to challenge you not to do something so clearly desirable to you? Out of some kind of ingrained mean-spiritedness? If each of our lives is only an attempt to make us happy in the present moment, what kind of sick happiness am I deriving out of this situation?
Is it because I'm just that disgusted? My life is apparently ruled by disgust. I want to go on the record and say that the idea that I am somehow motivated by disgust at the kind of sexual acts you do presupposes that I both take an interest in and actively imagine them--which I most certainly do not.
Why would I pick this moment to speak up, this moment after the Supreme Court of the United States has already answered in your favor? Just to go on record as being bigoted? Not very smart, if you know the history of bigotry and prejudice.
Shouldn't I be motivated by self-interest and self-preservation? If I'm aiming at making my life the smoothest, easiest, and most conflict-free possible, shouldn't I keep my mouth shut about this issue? It's already been decided anyway in the courts. What's the point of, once again, bringing religion into it when it's not wanted?
The point is that it's not about me, and it's not about you. The truth is very personal, but at the same time it convicts each of us equally of wrongdoing. I have done wrong in my life, committed deeds that I looked back upon with shame. This truth is personal. The wrong things I have done, however, have been done by others--and regretted by them. That is the objective side of it, the human law that is greater than any pronouncement of the Supreme Court.
The epilogue that I most want to add, and that everyone least wants to hear, is that forgiveness for the wrong things we do is REAL. Love is real. In fact, we can only find love when we face up to the truth, when we seek forgiveness for whatever acts we committed that cause us shame, admitting them but at the same time not letting them define us.
We all need forgiveness. There's no earthly exception to this rule. We need mercy, God's mercy, so desperately that we fear it is a fairy tale designed to tease us, something so bright and sparkly that people can only imagine it is real not actually receive it as a gift. It's real. At the core of reality is a love so deep that it chases us, he chases us, even into our darkest moments.
That's what I want for you--and what I want for myself. If I stand up for right and wrong, for an objective morality, it's so that all of us can measure ourselves against it and find ourselves wanting and cry out for God. That's the condition we're in and it won't change, even though the laws change. The Supreme Court can decide as it will, impersonally, but people each hurt individually. Post-abortive mothers who were told their child is just a fetus and it's perfectly legal and safe to get rid of it hurt deeply and can barely lift their eyes to God.
The law of this land may or may not match the moral order inscribed in the heart of humanity. It may not care about the pain it allows, in the name of freedom, and it does not deal out mercy for those who are affected by it. When we are alone, when we cannot hide, we need God. We can't hide behind the fronts we put up, the identities we so carefully construct for the world's sake, the webs we find ourselves tangled in and dysphoric in despite ourselves.
All of us are alone. You may marry, someone of the opposite sex, or form a now-legal union with someone of the same sex, but that doesn't change the fundamental aloneness of your being. The other person will one day die, or given the state of marriage now, leave you before then, or you may leave him or her, and then you will be alone again. This loneliness in you, and in me, also cries out for God. We cry out to be loved and not to be alone; he hears us and answers us.
We have to face it, though. If we tell ourselves there's nothing wrong, then no problem can be fixed. If we tell ourselves our deeds are good, then they cannot be forgiven. If we enshrine what pleases us into law, we will one day look around for someone not utterly broken and hurting from the unacknowledged weight of her own actions, and find that person hard to find.
