Karma on Account

The idea of accountability was in my craw all day yesterday because of the supreme court case involving the 1st ammendment rights of the church that has been protesting at american soldier funerals.  To stay on point, I will not even speak to the church's premise that anyone in an american uniform condones gay rights and is deserved of god's wrath.  I'm pretty sure its invalidity is self-evident.  I will take issue with  protected speech, that on its face, meets the criteria of man's laws and is supported by numerous media agencies and civil rights groups.  As a society, we champion our rights and openly challenge the boundaries regularly.  On account, how can I possibly know how my speech will effect others and what kind of universal retribution may befall me for speaking ill.  Ill would be my generic term for what society would deem evil, mean, wrong, uncalled for, invalid and a host of other negative adjectives for speech.  We do not speak in a vacuum, even talking to ourselves can injure.  What we say always finds ears and the meaning of that speech is the response we get back from the listener.  Anyone who is not a sociopath has an internal measure of right and wrong, not under the law, nothing learned at home or on the playground in the form of a response to fair play, but an innate feeling of empathy for another's feelings.  How does speaking ill add up?  Do the number of people offended matter or the frequency of or voracity about the ills take a karmic toll on our lives or person?  The immediacy of that toll count can be felt and what person is able to let it accumulate?  I regret little comments, meant to harm or pick at a wound of another.  I apologize, in fact, for the wholesale ill that I have caused over my lifetime and accept the universal retribution that may befall me.  Mostly because I think that forgiveness and accountability are not related and that humans are the most fragile of species on this earth.  I am happy too be accountable to the law and appreciative for the rights I have in light of it, but cannot let that be the overriding factor of my speech or the ill that it might cause to another.  Stealing the last moments of a grieving father for his dead son is ill beyond measure.  To belittle and indemnify a soldier for his actions to maintain that right to speak freely is ill beyond measure.  I am not a fan of the military and even less a fan of organized religion.  In this regard, I still cannot fathom stealing that moment.  Those moments are who we are, free or not and the reverence paid to those is not and will never be a point of law but an accounting of karma and subject to the universe at large.