The pastor at my church sends out a monthly email, usually discussing a current event and the way parishioners might address this event. This month’s email included the question: “How does a gay couple getting married undermine heterosexual marriage?”

This is a question I’ve considered a number of times, so I was very interested to hear what a man I truly respect had to say. The pastor said the answer to this question may depend on your belief in one of two worldviews.

If marriage is something given to man by God (see Genesis), he suggested, then gay marriage “strikes at the heart of the meaning of marriage,” which is Biblically defined, in part, as a heteresexual union. If, however, marriage is merely a social construct created by communities to serve certain needs, then “as social conditions change, societies have a right to reconfigure marriage so as to change its very definition.”

However, I believe there is, in fact, a third, more complicated worldview: A view that marriage may be a gift from God, but, the government, by sanctioning and licensing marriage, has created a cultural construct. And by doing this, has also made it necessary to either extend the right of marriage equally (see the Constitution of the United States of America), or acknowledge its ongoing mistake of sanctioning faith-based creations and, instead, begin licensing only civil unions and leave marriage or other faith-based unions, however defined, to the individuals and their chosen religions. (One of these two is probably a lot less complicated than the other.)