Separate is equal. I can separate myself from the gay community and treat them equally. I do it everyday. But I don't push my agenda on them. And they separate themselves from me. And I work with people of different faith and color but we don't protest outside. We work together. And when we go home we are free to do what we want. But people tell me I can't eat meat but I don't tell people they can't eat vegetables. And they tell me the science and debate is over but don't tell them it's over.
So there is a difference and you can accept jot or deny it. And the differences should be superficial. And equal. And we should all be allowed our freedom to the point of law. As long as the law allows equity without stepping on our freedoms.
Separate is not equal. Again, people find ways to make it unequal, even if the law doesn't. You can say the differences should be superficial. But just as the differences between black schools and white schools, or black restrooms and white restrooms, etc., were not superficial, the differences between treatment of Civil Unions and marriages are not superficial either.
The best example, unsurprisingly, has to do with custody. The sample sizes here are not enormous since same-sex marriage is still a relatively new phenomenon in our country, but it's looking more and more like custody cases in which one parent in a same-sex marriage passes away are decided more similarly to heterosexual marriages than same-sex civil unions. The law may be equal, but the interpretation of judges and juries is not. That's the kind of opening you leave all too easily by forcing a difference in terminology.
Again, my ideal solution is to have no marriage, legally. Call everything a Civil Union and be done with it; transfer all current marriage laws to being civil union laws. But absent of that, which of course would receive massive backlash from the religious right, I think you have to call legal same-sex couplings marriages. Otherwise they will continue to be marginalized. It's the natural response of society to segments of the population lots of people are uncomfortable with. And let's face it, there are still a lot of people who are uncomfortable with homosexuals. Predominantly older people, who are exactly the ones who don't manage to weasel out of the majority of their jury duty.