The Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board on Feb. 20 bravely endorsed civil unions for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters ("Equal rights: We can have marriage, civil unions," Opinion).

Because I have taken the trouble to learn a little bit about the long history of the custom of marriage, I am willing to assert that marriage was civil before it became religious. At first, marriage was a way for two separate factions (two families, two tribes, two fiefdoms, two commercial enterprises, two empires, etc.) to unite and gain strength by marrying the daughter of one faction leader to the son of the other faction leader. When churches became significant elements of society, they quite naturally made the uniting of a woman with a man a basic part of their religious creed and practice.

By the 16th century, churches apparently had become the primary manager of marriage, and when Henry VIII could not obtain the Pope's approval for his divorce from Catherine, King Henry ended his allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church and established the Church of England.

Churches and religious leaders were important contributors to the public life of Colonial America, but the Founding Fathers were careful to exclude from the Constitution of the United States any role for an established church. And Thomas Jefferson described their intended wall between church and state. The First Amendment clearly says that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ... ."

While churches have basic doctrines and practices governing religious marriage, from the beginning of this nation the various states have enacted laws concerning marriage licenses, the rights and responsibilities of the parties in a marriage, and the procedures to be followed when a marriage ends in divorce.

Obviously, because a license to marry must be obtained from the county clerk, all marriages are civil marriages, even when they are performed in a church. As the editorial board has acknowledged, "The controversial topic of same-sex marriage may simply be a matter of semantics." The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines semantics as "the study or science of meaning in language forms, particularly with regard to its historical change."

By endorsing civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, the editorial board has, perhaps unintentionally, adopted a 'separate but equal" stance that was ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in its landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.

Today, in support of the principle of equality before the law, a separate status in marriage for gays and lesbians is not equal. True equality means marriage for any two people who can obtain a marriage license from the county clerk, and the county clerk should be required to issue marriage licenses to all law-abiding same-sex couples.

It is nonsense to say that same-sex marriages "threaten the sanctity of marriage." The First Amendment guarantees the right of churches to perform marriages according to their established, Bible-based or revealed doctrines. The sanctity of marriage has always depended on the extent to which the partners in a marriage keep the promises they have made to each other, to their community, to their church and/or to their God.

Boyer Jarvis is a retired University of Utah professor. He lives in Salt Lake City.