Elias K. Mangosteen

It boils down to terminology. What they are saying, in effect, is that civil union and marriage are, from a governmental/legal standpoint, the same thing. You can't call one type of civil contract a 'marriage' and grant one set of rights, and call another civil contract a 'civil union' and grant a different, lesser set of rights, when the contracts are the same thing. A civil contract joining two people in a long term legal arrangement has to convey the same rights, no matter who the two people are. Since the standard for two person (and maybe someday, multiple people) contracts are legaly called "marriage" (seperate from any religious implications the word has) that's the standard that has to be lived up to.