this week in god.... (Maddow blog)

[Stevepol]

13. But this adds one more assurance to the procedure.

If the term civil union is solely used by the government and not "marriage," the GOVERNMENT won't be required to define the term marriage, so it gets such a loaded term completely out of the orbit of government and leaves everybody free to make the definition through social groupings.

Admittedly, if the SCOTUS sanctions gay marriage, you will have the same result on the surface, but you will also have the government weighing in on one side supposedly by sanctioning the term. If the government only sanctions civil unions, then the opponents of gay marriage can no longer argue that the government is telling them what marriage means. It will save a lot of political folderol and pull the props out from under haters of government over-reach, etc. It may seem to be a too subtle difference but these people who rely on wedge issues can make a mountain out of a mole hill and this gets around that I think.

Anyway, we'll see what happens, and how this SC dances around the issue so as not to offend their right-wing masters.