Every human who has ever lived has at one point or another felt wronged, as well as felt the guilt of having wronged another. On the flip side of the coin I would say that every person has at some point felt that they have done something good. Now we definitely do not all agree on the criteria used to determine right and wrong but I think it safe to say that the concept exists for all people. This leads me to ask why. Why does morality exist? It doesn’t appear to manifest itself in any other species, why in humans?

Following closely on the heels of morality is justice. I would once again assert that all humanity understands the concept of justice, the atonement for wrong done, or retribution for a wrong suffered. Where does the idea that there should be justice come from and why do we most often look outside ourselves for it to handed out. It seems to me that intuitively humans understand that there is a higher standard to measure themselves against and that the measuring or judgment needs to be done by someone else. That ultimately it comes from somewhere else.

I think this is evidence of a higher power. Now I don’t wish to debate the nature of this power in this post merely to suggest that it is really beyond reasonable doubt that it exists. We are created with an instinctive grasp of the concepts of right and wrong and justice. All of our legal systems have at their heart principles that are presumed to have originated from outside of the race. All morality ultimately stems from religion, which is really, when taken as a whole humanity’s attempt to relate to a power that they instinctively realize exists outside of themselves.

We understand the concept of justice because on some level we know that some day we will be judged. We understand the concept of right and wrong because it forms the basis for judgment. The part of us which defines us as an individual, that which I would refer to as the soul longs to communicate with the higher power. Put simply “right” actions are those that bring us closer to the higher power and “wrong” actions are those that push us away. Justice can be seen as what is necessary to bring us back into proper relationship with the higher power when we have done something “wrong”.

It seems to me that this higher power wishes to have a relationship with us. Why else create us with an innate need for justice that causes us to look outside of ourselves, that causes us to interact with something/someone outside of our species? In my opinion all of these things provide clear evidence of a higher power; what we do about that knowledge or what we are supposed to do is debatable but its veracity isn’t.

On the one hand with their words they hold out marriage as something valuable and a worthy state to attain; while on the other they denegrate and debase it with their actions. It would be reasonable to conclude that since they are prepared to go to the extreme action of getting married in order to hopefully win that right for someone else, they must therefore think that getting married is important and that everyone should have the right to do so.

The method they used to make their point sends exactly the opposite message. The gentleman who initiated this scenario put an ad in the paper for women to meet him at the justice of the peace at a particular date and time for the express purpose of marrying him to protest the fact that same sex couples don’t have the ability to get married. Apparently, a number of them showed up and the decision was made as to which of them would actually get married by a game of spin the bottle.

Typically I would say if you are making a decision on the basis of the spin of a bottle, the outcome of that decision probably doesn’t have a lot of importance for you. Yet the couple involved would have us believe that their same sex friends are having something valuable withheld from them. Well I would say that it is fairly clear from their casual approach to their own marriage that they don’t actually hold the institution in high regard and that evidence followed to its logical conclusion supports the case that they don’t truly believe that their same sex friends are truly missing out on anything important at all.

It is probably closer to the truth to say this is a case of wanting something that someone else has; not because you actually want yourself but just because they have it.