Now Back to the Wall: Flyer, your point on technicalities is correct, which is why I lean toward gay marriage. My best-of-all-worlds solution is about as likely as, well, the government giving up any of the other silly and pointless authority it has snapped up. No, there isn't much difference between marriage and civil union; in fact, I'd argue that the difference should be simply religious. If you want to be married in your church, mosque, synagogue, or whatever, you abide by their rules. The government, on the other hand, could have a single standard for all comers. Pulse? In addition, I don't see anything wrong with, say, two spinster ladies, who happen to be sisters or cousins, getting a civil union to simplify their financial or caregiving relationships. But the principle of the matter, in the end, is not so much civil rights as it is government distribution of benefits or drawbacks to certain relationships via, for example, tax policy. The current situation boils down to sorting out the unintended consequences of bad social policy.