No one church sets rules on marriage

I wanted to respond to Joe Schrantz’s June 22 letter “Not so fast on ‘marriage equality.’”

In his letter, Mr. Schrantz states: “For almost 2,000 years, the Catholic church has declared marriage to be a holy sacrament between a man and a woman. In the eyes of the church, there is no such thing as a marriage between two females or between two males. No holy sacrament.”

I agree that it’s all well and good for the Catholic church, or any religious institution, do define marriage however it wants. And if Mr. Schrantz and others wish to adhere to those definitions, fine by me. However, beyond that, I fail to see Mr. Schrantz’s point wherein he implies that we should all, non-Catholics included, adhere to the edicts of his religion.

Essentially, he is arguing that our nation should be run as a theocracy, with his particular religion calling the shots on how the rest of us should conduct our personal business.

His argument might be accurate, assuming of course that we lived in Vatican City. Last I looked, we don’t live in the Vatican, because this is the United States of America, where we have a separation of church and state and make our own laws regarding basic civil rights.

And here, we don’t take orders from the pope or self-declared theocrats.

Matthew Lowry

Mundelein