Semantics. True, words mean things, but it's virtually inconsequential, here.
Why are people so dumb?
Check articles from Stanley Kurtz early last year on NRO. The fact is that "civil unions" have the overwhelming effect of homosexual marriage.
That's a meaningless distinction. Whatever it is called (call it a Mirage if you want), they require that it be exactly the SAME as marriage.
I'll say the decision is illogical. They used an "equal protection" clause to say that a "pairing" of people have rights, rather than individuals. Thus, they said that a pair of males have their rights violated because a male-female pair can marry and the same-sex pair cannot. No "individual" has their rights violated, every male no matter what their preference have a right now to marry a female.
However, having decided that a male-male couple needs "equal protection", they then said that other types of couplings could still be discriminated against, most notably "polygamy".
However, to do so they must have decided that a government has NO COMPELLING REASON to prevent two men from being married, but the same government HAS a compelling reason to keep a man from marrying two women, or a woman from marrying two men, or a bisexual marrying both a man and a woman.
But while I can come up with a compelling reason to deny same-sex marriage (one being they can't have children, and therefore can't contribute to society what society needs, a coherent biological family unit), I can't think of a compelling reason why we wouldn't let 3 people get married.
I hope this pushes the Virginia amendment over the top. We were getting worried here about it, but this should show every virginian that the threat is real -- after all, we have an equal protection clause in OUR constitution as well.