Thread:Comments:California's same-sex marriage ban ruled unconstitutional; appeal expected/The US finally begins to crawl out of the third world/reply (27)

You're moving the goalposts again. The entire line of argument started from me asserting that a nominal distinction between "civil unions" and "marriages" cannot be reasonably construed as "persecution" against gays and it's not similar to a system of forcible segregation of the races. Now those words have disappeared and you would have those same words contend against your much milder "unequal" language. The facts remain that the government could avoid this issue you raise, so it's not a necessary consequence of a system of civil union and that de minimis compelled speech and calling two identical documents respectively a marriage license and a civil union is not persecution or segregation. Calling it such is just an abuse of language and of logic.