Recently, the California Supreme Court ruled that denying same sex marriage was unconstitutional. As of June 16th , I believe, it will now be legal for same sex couples to marry and you can image that this decision caused a lot of stir. While some said that decision was fair and just, others said that it was a horrible choice made by the courts. As I went to look at the weather on our local newspaper website, the headlines announcing this decision was there, in big bold print, for all to see. In smaller print and a bit off to the side were article headlines about a young girl dying as well as other pretty yucky headlines. (I now know go to weather.com so as to avoid the news even more.) I’ll admit I read the decision story and while it offered the typical news, I was more surprised and completely wrapped up in reading the comments that were left by readers. Because this decision caused such controversy, there were literally hundreds of comments posted by readers concerning this issue. Some were happy about the decision, while others literally felt as though it could end life as we know, it not just here in California, but in the United States. By the way, there were little if any comments left about the other stories.

Part of what makes this country great is the fact that we can say exactly what we feel. So, while the differing opinions didn’t bother me in the least, the way those opinions were being expressed deeply saddened me. Obviously not all of them, but more than enough expressed feelings of hatred from both sides. Some people who said they were Christians were saying how much they hated gays and I even saw one post were the writer (again welding a shield of Christianity) said he was glad because now he would know where gay people lived and could “do something” about them. Some of the people that were in agreement with this decision were very ready to call Christians and other religious people closed minded haters. While some of these people were saying we all needed to be open minded, their next sentence expressed resentment and hatred towards Christians.

While I was saddened by what I was reading, I wasn’t necessarily surprised. There is one thing that people will fight, kill and die for…. the ability to be right. “It’s my way or the highway.” How do they know they are right? Their God told them so. (Remember when I say God I am referring to the Creator. You may choose to refer to him/her in another way, but for this conversation I’m going to refer to the creator as God.) The problem with this thinking is that as I’ve just said, we all have the choice of how we define God. So which one gets to make the decisions? Some say it’s the one’s we learn about in the Holy book. O.K., which book? The Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Talmud, etc. Once again, I submit to you that we need to get away from saying what is right and wrong and simply ask what works and what doesn’t work.

I feel comfortable in saying that if we polled many different people, we would all pretty much want the same thing, a safe and peaceful world. If that is in fact the intention of people, then we need to step back and ask if our thoughts, feelings and/or actions are working to achieve that goal. When we are spending so much time and energy trying to prove that others are wrong and doing it through hate, it just doesn’t work. You can’t force change. You can’t scare people into change. You can’t do peace, you have to be peaceful. You can do love, you have to be loving. It’s time we all step back and look at each other as we were meant to, which is simply as an extension of our self. Most of all, it’s time we enter this one little sentence into our daily lives. Mine is not the right way, it is simply another way.