Commenting on my earlier post about Gandhi, and whether or not truth and love always win out, Laillyt writes:

Rabbi, what exactly do you mean by ‘truth’ and ‘love’? I’m a Jew and a lesbian, and the deepest truth of my life is the love of a red-headed woman with blue eyes, aka Penny. But to many people, that ‘love’ is a self-destructive sinful lie that will destroy America as they know it if there is any official legal recognition of this. So whose ‘truth’ about ‘love’ is actually true, and will win, mine or Rod Dreher’s?
And since we are both Jews, what about those Christians who believe that the truest, deepest ‘love’ is that of Jesus, who died on the cross for our sins? Is their ‘truth’ about the ‘love’ of Jesus going to win over our Jewish view of G-d’s ‘truth’ and ‘love’ for the people of Israel? You talk about ‘truth’ and ‘love’ winning out, but what happens when two people have absolutely irreconcilable different beliefs about what constitutes ‘truth’ and ‘love’, what wins out?

Powerful questions and beautifully asked, I think. And while I cannot speak for Rod, I would offer three responses to your questions, Laillyt:

First, you might want to think about the way in which truth and love are not always the same. You have artfully merged them in order to avoid the very tension which I suggest is necessary. It’s not a battle over your truth and love vs. someone else’s. It’s a battle, often within ourselves between that which we think of as most loving and that which we think of as most true. The rabbis taught long ago that they are not always the same.
Second, what if you spoke about the love that you and Penny share, while acknowledging that it does undermine some people’s understanding of truth? And what if they had to speak about that truth without resorting to demeaning the genuine quality of the love the two of you share? I know that this will not make either side entirely righteous, but that’s the point. A measure of modesty about the possible truth and love found among those with whom we disagree is often all that stands between us and destroying each other.
Third, why worry about which side will “ultimately” win? Leave the ultimate stuff to God, fate, time or whatever you want to call it. That should be true for all ultimate questions, including the Jewish-Christian theological ones to which you allude. In the meantime, I would simply focus on how the pursuit of that which any of us believe to be true, helps us to treat others, especially those with whom we disagree, more lovingly.