The US finally begins to crawl out of the third world
You're moving the goalposts again. The entire line of argument started from me asserting that a nominal distinction between "civil unions" and "marriages" cannot be reasonably construed as "persecution" against gays and it's not similar to a system of forcible segregation of the races. Now those words have disappeared and you would have those same words contend against your much milder "unequal" language. The facts remain that the government could avoid this issue you raise, so it's not a necessary consequence of a system of civil union and that de minimis compelled speech and calling two identical documents respectively a marriage license and a civil union is not persecution or segregation. Calling it such is just an abuse of language and of logic.
I fail to see how illustrating the legal pitfalls of civil unions legislation is "moving the goal posts". It's difficult to imagine how the governemnt could "avoid the issue" without introducing a plethora of new and problematic legislation regulating the language of legal contracts or court proceedings. Your dismissal of compelled speech as "de minimis" only belies your callous failure to recognise what is clearly a form of discrimination- Perhaps I can offer an example to help you empathize - Just Imagine if the situation were reversed and Homosexual marriages were the only relationships recognised by the state, As a Heterosexual You'd be dishonest to call your heterosexual civil union partner "husband" or "wife", or to say the two of you were "married". Now I don't know about you, but I think most people would consider that a form of persecution. Yes, it's a hypothetical, but it's precisely the situation millions of homosexual couples would find themselves in under a civil unions regime. Before Civil Rights laws were passed in the US, citizens of differing races were often not allowed to marry, such marriages were legally prohibited and not recognised by the state or federal governments. If someone suggested a law granting Interracial couples the right to "Civil Unions", rather than Marriage, It would be considered a policy of segregation or racial discrimination. It would be most enlightening to hear how discrimination by race in this regard is somehow radically different that discrimination on the basis of gender.