Ah, thank you for the information - I wasn't aware the California still had civil union, so that's something. But could you clarify for me what the difference is between a civil union and a marriage? Because in the UK we use the term "civil partnership" but that basically means identical rights to marriage and I'm assuming that's...not the case here or it would be purely a matter of terminology and nowhere near as big a deal?

As to the civil rights issues you bring up, yes, absolutely, we have a horrible history of civil rights abuses. But in general, over the last century and a half, we've been reversing that. I may just be uninformed, but I can't think of any other recent examples of situations where once equal rights were won, we went and reamended major laws in order to take them back away. It would be like re-introducing salary caps, re-introducing force relocation of native american populations, re-introducing no votes for women or non-white people, etc.

It takes us a horrible, shamefully long time, sometimes, to realise that people are people but once they get put in that category, since when do we demote them?

As to the adoption thing, that just...it's insane.

Apparently God hates gay people more than he wants children to have loving homes.