Between vacation days and furlough time, I’ve been sort of in and out of the office the last month or so, and thus did I miss a recent editorial by my colleague Karen Petersen about the efforts of a group called Basic Rights Oregon.

The editorial was called to my attention by a mutual friend who happens to be sort of fundamentalist; long story short, BRO is a pro-gay marriage outfit, and our religious-right friend — who is very nice despite some Falwellian tendencies — disagreed with Karen’s more — how should I say this — open-minded point of view.

After reading Karen’s well-written and well-thought-out piece, I felt compelled to share with her my slightly differing views, and because I am sure you are all just dying to know what they are, I will share them with you, right here, right now. Here we go.

First off, despite having grown up in a fairly homophobic time and place, at this point I simply have no problem with consenting adults being involved in same-sex relationships; it’s none of my business, and I just could not care less.

Along those same lines, I have no problem with same-sex couples getting state licensure and being afforded all the same rights and privileges as a man and woman in wedlock.

But — and here’s where I diverge from Karen and the BRO people — I’m not really intererested in referring to a state-licensed same-sex union as “marriage.”

Here’s why, and it’s very simple: To me, marriage just refers to a man and a woman. If you want to call two men or two women a marriage, you can, but to me it’s not the right term. Just like you can call a Ford a Chevy if you’d like, or a dog a cat, but that doesn’t make a Ford a Chevy, or make a dog a cat.

But put me in charge, I told Karen, and the state is out of the “marriage” business altogether, regardless of the gender composition of the couple. What I would have Oregon do is issue some kind of civil union license to all couples — something that covered the business angle of marriage, the shared debts, that sort of thing. As far as the, well, marriage angle of marriage — the spiritual, sanctified part — here’s what I would say to any couple: If you want to be “married,” and can find some church to marry you, more power to you.

“So if a same-sex couple found a church to marry them,” Karen asked, “would you be willing to say they were married?”

“I would acknowledge they’d had a marriage ceremony, and would tell people that’s what they had done,” I said, “but again, to me, a same-sex union isn’t a marriage. It’s just a question of semantics for me. I am in the words business, and I like to use precise words all the time, not just as they pertain to relationships.”

“If,” Karen asked, “you had a chance to vote on something that assured same-sex couples all the same rights as heterosexual married couples, and it referred to the same-sex couples as being ‘married,’ would you vote yes, considering you want them to have the same rights?”

I am a reasonable man, so I thought it over and answered thusly:

“Even though I don’t agree that same-sex couples can be ‘married,’ that word probably would not be a deal-breaker for me,” I said. “I would probably vote for it, explaining to people that while I don’t consider it marriage, I could look beyond that one inconsistency with my beliefs and vote to grant people the rights I think they are entitled to.”

Btw, I explained all of this to the fundamentalist friend who had called Karen’s editorial to my attention. I also told her that if being gay was a sin — not saying it is, but if it is — then that’s between those people and God and not any of my business.