First and most importantly, legislation would be separate, which means that though you could legislate it as equal the first day, every additional right granted to marriage would end up being fought for in the case of civil unions, since the fate of gay and heterosexual relationships in the law wouldn’t be bound.

It seems a simple matter to establish either by judicial decision or my statute that "marriage" and "civil unions" shall be interpreted as synonyms in all past and future statutes. I seriously doubt they go back into all past statutes to edit them, they simply interpret them in light of the new principle.

The answer is simple, straights don’t want that.

The implication that all people of a given orientation (i.e. "straights") all want one thing on the issue of gay rights is a slander. There are, in point of fact, many "straights" who believe in and work for equal treatment for homosexuals.

When referring to people who oppose gay rights, you should refer to them that way, as "people who oppose gay rights" or "anti-gay rights" or by a term specific to the issue, "anti-gay marriage". You might notice that I have never said “the gays” want anything. I have instead referred to “gay rights proponents” or “pro-gay rights” or something similar.

Anyway, you missed my point. My point was not to endorse the push back on the word "marriage", it was to point out that obsessing on that term instead of the "civil unions" sop was bad strategy because it set the overall cause back years and, in some areas, decades. I think if they had stuck to the core issue — equality — and resisted the urge to demand the purely emotional victory of “marriage”, we would already have legally equal civil unions in the majority of states instead of just in 3.

No, it’s not. Neither Loving nor Perez are really applicable. Both assume the ancient established legal definition of marriage, that of a man to a woman, and say that race cannot be a discriminating factor. No state that I am aware of prohibits a gay person from marrying someone of the opposite sex because they’re gay. There is no discrimination there on the grounds of sexual orientation. Gays have the very same "right of marriage" as everyone else does–to someone of the opposite sex–it’s just not all that useful to them. That’s not discrimination preventing the enjoyment of an existing right.

Loving and Perez did not re-write the definition of marriage to include a new right to marry someone of the same sex, a right never before recognized in Western law.

And before any pro-gay-marriage people descend to beat on me, I’m just saying why that particular legal argument is inherently flawed. I worked for over a decade to keep a DOMA amendment OFF my state’s ballot–and we finally failed. It’s been my belief for quite a while that society would eventually come to accept committed gay partnerships as deserving of that legal status, if only militant gays would quit provoking massive backlash with offensive in-your-face tactics. That within a another generation it would be a de facto victory.

And legislation–the proper avenue–was indeed trending that way. But the militancy provoked the backlash, and that backlash is consistently resulting in state constitutional barriers in the form of DOMA amendments. Those are much higher legal hurdles than any simple legislative fight can ever be.

Of course the immediate question arises, then why not eliminate the word marriage entirely from the law? The answer is simple, straights don’t want that. The opposition would paint gays as not only trying to get hitched, but trying to tell straights that their marriages weren’t real marriages! Also some people say that the sheer number of places that mention "marriage" or "married" in the law is so big that it makes eliminating the term unmanageable. This argument doesn’t convince me much though. In Spain when gay marriage was legalized all they did was add one phrase to the central marriage law stating "The term marriage will apply equally no matter the gender of the members".

Right or wrong is beside the point when we are talking about effective political tactics and by remaining fixated on the word "marriage", gay rights advocates often find themselves facing more opposition that was necessary to face and for no gain other than a purely emotional one.

I think gay rights advocates would be well-advised to keep their eye on the ball. The issue is obtaining equal legal standing and equal privileges. What we call it is unimportant and if avoiding the word "marriage" gives a sop that mollifies people who would otherwise be opposed, the only people who care are those who want to "win" more than they want to really win. As Shakespere said, a rose by any other name smells just as sweet.

In any event, though personally I would just as well call them all marriage and let religious institutions call marriage what they like (this is already the case) if the whole mess were to be fixed (and it wouldn’t) by just calling EVERY marriage, homosexual and heterosexual something entirely different, civil union, civil marriage, union contract, beezlebeeb ducky, whatever, I’d sign on.

And just to be clear, gay couples deserve the same rights as married couples. All this fighting over a word. When I was a kid and we came across a couple that was not married in a church, my mom would say (cueing Louie Andersons mother in voice and look) "civil marriage". Why don’t we just go to that,  for all couples not married in the church.