The point is, that the blue places, correlate with social liberty regarding a certain subject, while the "conservative" places, are no offense. Shitty.
The correlation is particularly funny, in Africa, where S.Africa, the richest and most developed, is the one out with gay marriage. Or the more lenient mediterranian one. And in S.America where the little orange-ish nations almost correlate 1:1 with the gay bashing ones.
Obviously having so doesn't make you instantly rich, but I consider it and indicator of attitudes towards individual liberty as a whole, and the results of the mindset against it.
About unions: In reality "marriage" is composed of three things:
a) Two persons who decide to stay together.
b) A cute little ceremony. (Some pretend that it has superstitious powers which of course it doesn't)
c). Certain government & legal benefits and procedures. Eg inheritance laws like who gets someone's property once someone's partner dies without a will. Joint taxation forms and so on.
a&b) are obviously just a matter of doing so. Anyone can be with someone and anyone can make a "ceremony" with flowers and rice and balloons.
This had always been so, and if by any chance someone thinks that he is not *really* together with someone least a government bureocrat or priest approves it, he is nuts.
c) Is then what actually everyone cares about.
Civil unions then, are nothing more than secular contracts, which grant or approximate c).
It doesn't matter what they are called because if someone has full a,b,c obviously its the same as being married for all practical purposes.
The point is however, that all this concerns the light green areas, whose problem is literally "bureaucracy" and "red tape".
That's scale aboves the yellow & red areas, which follow more closely the original middle eastern "morality". (and I have three ME religions in mind there)
As far as California goes, except that I expect that to be overturned within a decade (if not this year), it at least still has same sex unions, as do quite a few other states. And the states of same sex marriage is increasing (the same time California was doings its thing, Connecticut legalized theirs. So the number kept the same). Hawaii and New York are next in line according to my classified info, so all those together, are actually called a positive trend.
Strategically speaking, technically the conservative side has been losing since the 40's* and someone only has to maintain the trend in order to "win", while they haven't even managed to stop it yet.
*Or the dark ages.
