If civil unions offer the same exact thing as marriage except with a different name, then the actual harm is lessened, although not completely rectified.

How many times must this be explained? This is precisely my source of frustration with casual supporters of gay rights. Civil unions do NOT offer the same exact thing as marriage with a different name. They do not confer any standard sets of rights across the states, and in no state do civil union offer any of the federal protections that opposite sex marriages automatically offer. Currently only marriage equals marriage.

Again, we can spend years building a separate but equal institution that mimics civil marriage... or we can go to the crux of the issue: that gender should be irrelevant to whether or not any civil marriage is legally valid.

There is no way to avoid the fact that this is a federal issue, when federal protections are exactly what is being withheld.