"I don't think it [a same-sex union] should be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state,"
I have a similar opinion, but not for the sake of same-sex unions. I think the government should be out of the marriage business altogether, that government should not distinguish between "married" and "not married".
This comes from doing divorces and seeing the mess they create, the resources they cost, and the realization that the divorce laws are set up so similarly to corporate dissolutions regarding property and child custody laws are what they are without regard to marital status, and that courts (at least in Alabama) don't really care about marriages or no-marriages one way or the other when it comes to divorcing parties and awarding custody, property rights, etc., such that the bottom line is that what we have is a significantly huge proportion of court resources devoted to managing the distribution of property and placement of kids based on what amounts to contract law and corporations law instead of anything faintly resembling marriage at all.
This is not about liberties and rights, so I make myself clear. I'm not in favor of granting any special status to homosexuals. In fact, they can already form LLC's or other entities as they wish to formalize their unions, and enter property-sharing and cost-sharing arrangements so similar to what the law treats as marriages that, as far as the black-letter law is concerned, there's not a lot of difference. Civil unions are, truly, already legal in all 50 states.
Look at it this way. If two guys enter a civil union and then dissolve that through whatever you want to call it ("divorce", for example) the law is going to set down a basic list of equitable principles to give some minimal equity to the parties so that one person does not have and exercise an unfair advantage at the expense of the other under the circumstances. Well, that's what divorce laws do now and that's exactly what corporate or partnership dissolutions do now. The only difference, and I mean the only one, is the child equation.
Let's look at that question, then. Say a man and woman never marry and have kid(s) together. Custody is disputed and support demanded. Guess what? No question of the fidelity of the parties to each other in the relationship enters the equation. The best interest of the children as between the two people is the only question. And, honestly, in real divorces where the parents of these kids have been married adultery or some other marital fault is only a pretext for an award of custody that the court wants to make, and most of the time it is only a small part of the rationale. The bottom line here is that the same set of laws applies to both situations: child custody statutes. They put no premium on marriage. The most common theme seen in custody disputes where marital fault does matter is in situations of abuse, and even there the laws are marriage-neutral. So, it is entirely a matter of application of the laws and the mere presence of status, not the principles on which the laws are created, that makes "marriage" a factor.
So, in my own personal opinion, every state should enact laws which recognize the contractual or corporate basis of these relationships without calling them marriages. Divorces would be dissolutions. Custody and support issues would continue to develop along the same tracks as they currently do and have for decades.
These laws would be structured as corporation or other business entity dissolution laws are, and most of these "relationships" could dissolve with no one ever entering a courtroom.
I think, too, and again just my opinion, that marriage is a sacrament, a holy thing, and that it is best preserved and managed by the church. In other words, I think the church has sole and plenary jurisdiction over all things spiritual --- and the government agrees, since it will not make ecclesiastical decisions. No more "no fault" divorces, because divorces, truly, would only be issued by church authorities based on their application of biblical standards and "church law". The ease with which people hook up and unhook now would not be made easier. It'd place a huge burden on the church to communicate to and inculcate people within them on what biblical marriage means. Personally, I think the church would rather have the government make those hard decisions rather than tackling the hardest questions itself, choosing instead to "counsel" in an environment where it sees itself as having no stake in the outcome. Put that burden on the church, and I think Christian divorce rates would plummet far below the "dissolution" rates of non-Christians.
My .02
Human government bears the same relation to hell as the church bears to heaven. (David Lipscomb, On Civil Government, 72).