Respect these rights.

Editor,

Religious extremists and their political enablers fail to understand the distinction between church-sanctioned marriage and state-sanctioned marriage.

Before same-sex marriage became an issue, men and women wishing to "get married" went to the county clerk for a marriage license and generally speaking engaged their preacher to perform a marriage ceremony. So the distinction between legal and religious marriage was blurred.

But there is a distinction. Marriage in the legal sense involves many obvious and many subtle rights that married people enjoy, from ownership of property to institutional visitation. This is why "civil unions," aside from conferring second-class citizenship on LGBT persons, are not an adequate substitute for marriage.

Marriage in the religious sense is exactly that. A church, for ceremonial purposes, confers "married" status on people who exchange vows in the presence of a preacher for the church.

But a couple married by a justice of the peace are legally married in the eyes of the state, and a couple who do not acquire a marriage license from the state but are married by a preacher, even though they may be considered married by the church, would not be married in the eyes of the law.

Civil rights are legal rights. They are conferred by the state. Both churches and people who follow church beliefs, because they are also citizens, are obliged to respect these rights.

Re: "The Instant Republican Backlash on Gay Marriage" (6/26/2015)