Same with marriage, I think. People forget that the US is a very different country than any other in the world. We have God-given rights that the government actually has to acknowledge, and then a set of laws that are limited privileges that are a completely separate thing, that exist solely for the benefit of the government.
Marriage is an issue that has traditionally crossed these boundaries. People get married in a church, and then file a marriage license wit the government, and they've let themselves believe it's one and the same things. But it is not - not at all. And the difference between them is what is being used to bash the hell out of marriage itself, when it should be limited solely to that government license that has been allowed to be misname a "marriage" license.
But it is no such thing, and it has never been any such thing. It already is a civil union license. The government just hijacked the word "marriage" to hide what they did. But now that's come back to bite everyone in their keesters.
Still, I’m not sure there needs to be any such license any more. When the people honored an invisible hand that said yes, these were going to be heterosexual marriages, then the government was looked to for assurance that this was not going to be incest, or that the participants were not suffering from venereal disease.
If the attitude now is “if it’s a civil union it has to embrace gay marriage too” then drop the pretense and don’t even issue the license any more.