"Jesus would rather kill, not marry, gay people" - Franklin Graham

[KevinM1]

If there's no right to the definition of a word, then why are you so uptight about the definition changing?

And, while changing the definition of marriage may not have been the only way to ensure rights and privileges, I believe it was the most egalitarian given the way marriage actually works in this country (which you continually and conveniently ignore).  You get to keep your traditional marriage, and same-sex couplings are elevated to the same stature.  Win-win.

I trust I don't need to go into a deep dive of how "separate but equal isn't equal" works re: civil unions.

I will clarify: There is no right to take for yourself a definition of a word that does not apply to you. You may wish/want it to, but there is no right. You might even have good compelling arguments why it should be changed. The problem is that a great number of people act like it is a right and then accuses anyone who does not agree of bigotry. Sorry, does not work that way. 

If civil unions don't have equal status under the law, then someone designed the law poorly. If someone thinks that gay marriage has somehow magically been made the same as the institution the word has represented for the last 10,000 years, they aren't thinking straight (hey, an unintended pun). They are still fundamentally different.

Except, for the nth time, marriage in the United States is simply a secular arrangement between a couple and the government.  You keep saying that the term doesn't, and shouldn't, apply to same-sex couples, but your justifications are merely appeals to authority (your religion) and tradition (10,000 years!) coupled with an apparent fear of change.

You can't have your cake and eat it too with this.  You can't say that the institution of marriage is ordained/constructed by god, but then in the same breath say that it's not a religious institution.  Because if it isn't a religious institution, then it has the same qualities of any other worldly institution, namely that it can be modified by people.  Which it has been.  Because, again, religion is immaterial when it comes to marriage in this country.  As it should be.

Furthermore, re: civil unions, even if they were hypothetically written identically to traditional marriage, that doesn't address the social stigma and division.  And, you can bet your ass that the Bible Belt states would write them to be less-than-marriages anyway.  By making same-sex marriage legal, it eliminates both problems... the coupling is equal in the social space, and since it uses existing law, there's no opportunity to codify discrimination.  Plus, as the SCOTUS ruled, there's no legal justification for making a separate system anyway.