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Basically, the way the game works is that under Equal Protection arguments any formal distinctions between the two will soon get reduced to almost nothing. But the people who are most against "gay marriage" will fight to the death for that one last tiny distinction between 'marriage' and 'civil union'. No one really cares about what that final itty bitty distinction is in its (teensy) substance- it's symbolic and all sides will concede that.
In the traditional logic, marriage means a social contract in which the people being married subordinate their sexual behavior to the arrangements imposed by the society (i.e. property, class behavior, responsibilities involving children and the partners), and society in return sanctions the sexual behavior and familial alliances/rancor about to take place.
Now the trick is not that the conservatives object to gay people wanting to subordinate themselves to society's norms and arrangements (sheesh, finally!) or taking on responsibilities. It's the sanction in return that they can't stomach conceding. (As a gay friend of mine said, 'Marriage means: sanctioned sex.') 'Civil union' means, by comparison, a glorified business contract- it is subordinate to, but not part of, the Social Contract, whereas marriage nominally is.
So getting the word 'marriage' is the most important thing politically. It's presently better to obtain something that is (initially) pretty deficient as a bureaucratic matter and legal definition and called 'marriage' than something perfect which will be segregated away, treated as second class in the 'separate but equal' manner, as 'civil union'. The semantics of the governmental order declare first or second class citizenship, it's that brutally simple.
I think your attempt to find a wedging issue is noble but easily foiled by politicians. The best wedge I see is attitudinal empiricism, juxtaposing freedom against 'traditional morality' proposing the latter to be out of whack. "Hey, it doesn't cost me a cent or any dignity, straight people have given marriage a bad name anyway, and only ungenerous old people and irrational wackos are against it for reasons that really make no sense to me" is about right.
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The way the political game seems to be playing it seems like Republicans are sending up the trial balloons and not liking the results enough. I'm sure the Religious Right is against gay marriage, but the business Republicans are all over the place- probably sufficiently split that the GOP won't dare to become all that aggressive nationally. The political fault line is presently more favorable to Republicans than Democrats, but on the one hand Democrats are more flexible and reduce social issue splits much more efficiently in recent years, and on the other Republicans can't afford to net lose any voters anymore.
I think the Republicans are nervous and circumspect enough about it to ultimately not actually start going through with the federal constitutional amendment process until the '04 elections have passed. Some hothead will try at some point before, but their national problem goes away if they can manage to strangle the problem in the crib- inside the political process in Massachusetts. If they manage to do that then they can avoid all their internal schisms as well as demagogue their bigotry indirectly via claiming virtue in stopping such a "dangerous measure". They won't embrace the anti-gay marriage line directly, at least not in front of TV cameras and real journalists.
I'm expecting the GOP to demagogue things to a limited degree nationally but mostly to focus their efforts in the matter here in the Commonwealth until mid-May or so, when the Legislature's deadline to enact what the Goodridge v. MDPH verdict says is reached. The more conservative Democrats in our state government are willing to try to sabotage things, of course, but everyone there knows this is probably the biggest game- of true national precedence- of their professional lives. They're licking their fingers and holding them to the wind. If he gets too clearly on the wrong side, Romney's ambitions are done for. If they get it wrong House Speaker Finneran and Senate Leader Traveligni are finished- and subsequent investigations of their other doings by their enemies will likely land them in courts, if not jail, for a long time. The House and Senate folk are hoping it gets a little out of control and burns Romney and Finneran and some others badly, so I think they're holding back, ready to dash some gasoline in at the end if voter anger doesn't do the job.
It seems reasonable to me to expect things to seem pretty much all gossip and prattle until February or so, when the GOP and other conservative forces (the RC Church and the like) run the first ambushes, set up the first showdowns and tests of strength, start up the agitprop, etc. Things will seem problematic for a while, seem to dangle without a decision or look quasi-bleak, then heat up to glowing white in early May. But I expect the forces of Light to prevail, seemingly just barely, at the deadline itself. You won't being hearing much polite language out of Massachusetts residents for a good part of that time- we will not be impressed positively with most of what we'll be seeing, our state government is a perpetual object of contempt and disgust. Enjoy what you can of what you see of Barney Frank, though, the man is magisterial and relentless and going to be crucial in winning this one.
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