That's just calling something by a different name. It's like when the Democrats call welfare an "investment", as if that's supposed to make us feel better. The whole civil unions idea was created by the left to sneak recognition and benefits for same-sex couples into law without the difficulty created by calling it what it is. Liberalism is full of these little deceits. You can get more people to support abortion if it call it pro-choice rather than pro-abortion. Same policy, different name.
We'd be taking the initiative to bring equality AND everyone would see that many gay activists don't want equal protection/rights, they want that word - marriage.
Why should conservatives, the people who protect our culture, be taking the initiative to bring "equality" to same-sex couples? Should we have polygamy civil unions, too? Are those okay as long as we don't call them marriage?
But, once Civil Union laws are on the books and done, it would be a lot harder to push for the word they want when they already have everything else.
Not at all. The left would say that we've already conceded that homosexual couples deserve equality and deserve all the benefits of normal couples, so why are we withholding the name "marriage" from them?
Then we could be done with this issue except for a few radicals.
The history of liberalism is filled with examples of this working exactly opposite from your prediction. We were told that if we increase the number of Third Worlders who legally can immigrate here, there'll less need for them to sneak in and even if they do, only the radicals would suggest allowing them to stay. We were told that if we pass the Civil Rights Act, only the radicals would say that blacks should be given race preferences and quotas.
In fact, when "gay rights" laws first appeared on the horizon thirty years ago, we were told that if we give them equality in employment and housing, they'll be satisfied and only the radicals will demand personal relationship equality.
When, in the entire history of liberalism, have liberals ever been satisfied with something? The only way to stop the homosexual juggernaut is to come right out and say that homosexuality is unnatural and cannot be respected by our laws without doing great harm to our liberties and our culture, and without exposing children to harmful propaganda and recruitment. Meeting them halfway, or in the case of civil unions 98% of the way, won't work.
It is a DONE DEAL. I know how the left works, they disguise everything under the equity umbrella and they’ve gotten everything they’ve wanted so far, “gay marriage” won’t be an exception unless we frame it ourselves.
I’m not giving up any of my morals for this. It is a civil contract then, words do matter. If words didn’t matter, they wouldn’t care about the word “marriage”.