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

[SteveII]

That is a straw man because changing the definition of marriage was not the only way to ensure the "rights and privileges" I currently enjoy. There is no right to the definition of a word.

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.