To the editor:

It occurs to me that the current legal and political debate over gay “marriage” is a tempest in a teapot based entirely on semantics. A union between two people, for legal advantage and entanglement, recognized by civil authority, is properly called a civil union, rather than holy matrimony or marriage — the government being neither holy nor constitutionally capable of endorsing one set of religious beliefs over another. To deprive two citizens of the same gender that recognition on the basis of religious beliefs would be a violation of their civil rights. That would leave to communities of faith and to God the recognition of the union of two people in holy matrimony, as well it should be.

It’s time for government to leave religion to the righteous, and get back to reducing the deficit.

Steven Bruner,

Lawrence