PROVIDENCE — A week before advising state college officials that Rhode Island should recognize same-sex marriages validly performed in Massachusetts, Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch attended the Feb. 15 wedding, in Attleboro, of his sister to her partner of 18 years.

The two women, Margaret and Patricia, and their 7-year-old twin daughters now share the last name: Lynch-Gadaleta.

Patrick Lynch, in an interview yesterday, said his 44-year-old sister’s marriage had no bearing on the opinion he issued on Wednesday in response to a request from the Board of Governors for Higher Education for advice on how to respond to three state employees who wanted their personnel files changed to reflect their same-sex marriages in Massachusetts.

“No disrespect to my sister, who I love very much, but it has zero impact on it,” Lynch said.

He said his opinion was “well-grounded and well-researched” by his staff and hinged on a 1904 state Supreme Court ruling that said Rhode Island considers a marriage performed in another state to be valid unless that marriage is, by common consent, considered “odious,” “dangerous to the fabric of society” or strongly at odds with public policy, such as a bigamous or incestuous marriage.

Asked yesterday if she believed her long-time relationship with a same-sex partner may have influenced her brother’s thinking, Pawtucket City Solicitor Margaret “Peg” Lynch-Gadaleta said: “No.”

But, “ I hope that anyone that knows me and experiences my relationship with Patty gets to see, perhaps, the other side that they haven’t seen before in that we’re good people, with a good family, contributing members to society that deserve the same rights that others have.”

What did she make of her brother’s opinion?

“Any opinion or decision that supports or encourages the legalization of gay marriage in Rhode Island, obviously I appreciate and hope that it will lead to a resolution of this issue that will allow me the same legal rights as other people.”

Rhode Island law does not explicitly prohibit or allow same-sex marriage. And for now, Lynch’s decision does not mean same-sex couples can marry in Rhode Island and it is not binding.

But when he issued it, he said that same-sex couples could use it in future legal cases and he felt he had “a duty and an obligation to respond and to not sit idly by while basic human rights are denied that are available to any other couple in Rhode Island.”

Elaborating yesterday, he said: “I didn’t write this decision for symbolism. I wrote this decision because real people who are living in and working in Rhode Island and trying to prosper in Rhode Island were being denied basic human rights. I didn’t write this as a symbolic gesture for the gay movement. It wasn’t a comment on gay marriage in Rhode Island.

“It was about ensuring that people weren’t denied basic human rights that they should be afforded under the law.”

Peg, a former state prosecutor, and her younger brother Patrick are two of onetime Pawtucket Mayor Dennis Lynch’s seven children. Profiles of one or another of the siblings — who also include state Democratic Party Chairman William Lynch — talk of a sprawling Irish-Catholic clan whose love of politics — and basketball — is almost legendary in their home city.

After Catholic grammar school, Peg attended St. Raphael Academy in Pawtucket, where she started to make a name for herself on the basketball court, scoring over 1,000 points. She continued her basketball career at Rhode Island College, where she was captain of her team and set records as a shooting guard in field goals and assists. After graduating from Suffolk University Law School in Boston, she spent one year playing professional basketball in Ireland before settling down to law.

Asked yesterday why she and her partner decided to marry in Massachusetts after 18 years together, Peg Lynch-Gadaleta said “that was a personal decision, nothing particular other than I wanted to get legally married to my partner, and hopefully obtain the legal rights that other individuals have.”

On issues as basic as pensions and taxes, she said the divide is as deep as the gap between “a married heterosexual couple” and “an unmarried heterosexual couple.”

“And I probably would not have had to go get a lawyer and put all my paperwork in order legally. If I was ‘legally’ married [in the eyes of Rhode Island law] it would be unnecessary to have the ream of paperwork we had to do to try to assure ourselves of the rights that other people receive when they are married.”

She said she and Patricia were married on her birthday last week by a judge who is a close friend, among a small circle of friends and family.

She considers the details personal and private, but acknowledges: “I did not seek nor did I get married in a church.”

On a day when the Most Rev. Thomas J. Tobin, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, declared her brother’s Ash Wednesday statements on same-sex marriage to be “very disappointing,” she said: “My legal marriage in Massachusetts is not a religious issue and my faith and my practice and my relationship with my God is private.”

In his statement, the bishop said: “Marriage, as instituted by God, blessed by the church and affirmed by every culture throughout the ages, is a union of one man and one woman. The state should not be in the business of supporting other lifestyles or promoting immoral, unnatural sexual activity, and that, of course, is the net effect of the attorney general’s decision.

“It is clear that the attorney general’s thinking on this issue has been influenced by the relentless gay agenda so prevalent in our state…His decision has given us another reason to repent of our sins and pray for forgiveness.”

In response, the attorney general’s office emphasized that Lynch’s opinion had been “a legal opinion, rooted in a careful study of constitutional law, statutory law, and case law. The only agenda the Attorney General is promoting is fairness. To deny basic human rights to real human beings is inherently unfair.”

From her perspective, Lynch’s newly married sister said: “It’s not a Catholic religious issue. It’s a legal governmental issue.”

kgregg@projo.com