> call it wedlock, give it the same legal ramifications,
    > voila, no pissing on everyone's feet, but no, it HAS to
    > be called wedding/marriage.

You'll be pleased to hear this was tried, and the country ended up going for marriages anyway after a few years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_partnership_in_the_United...

> what I ABSOLUTELY don't get is this: why not just ask for a different word with the same legal status

The word at issue is the name of the legal status. By definition, a separate legal institution with a different name with similar (even identical) effects will be a different legal status.

And, as was the case with "separate but equal" racial policies in the US, the same groups that had "separate but equal" for same-sex partnerships as their fallback position also spent lots of time, effort, and money trying to prevent "equal" first. It was never really about the name at all, "separate but equal" was, as always, a means to assure that the "separate" part was codified in law in hopes that the effects could either be kept unequal, or that later political change would allow making the effects unequal again and that having separate institutions well established would streamline that.

Words have legal meaning. If they called it something different it would be easy to write new laws giving special rights only to people in one of the groups. By legally using the same words and terminology then you make sure that both groups are automatically covered by all future laws.

Yes like have Tax laws to help encourage people to have children. (This isn't a moral judgment)

This is a SERIOUS issue in Europe and Japan (What do you do to help your population have more children when they don't) In USA this isn't an issue YET but it is interesting to see France, Germany and Japan struggle with a huge drop in population in the near future.

You might be surprised to learn gay people can form a successful family unit, raise a heterosexual child to adulthood, and help them start their own family.