The US finally begins to crawl out of the third world
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.