I think a lot of people have difficulty separating the idea of marriage as a religious institution and marriage as a civil institution, because of course it is both those things.
As a religious institution, the state should have no business involving itself in how religious denominations want to define marriage. If the Catholics don't want to marry gay folks, the government should not compel them to. If the Unitarians do want to marry gay folks, the government should not stop them.
I think a lot of the controversy about "legalizing" same-sex marriage is due to the belief by some that your conservative Southern Baptist pastor will now be compelled to perform gay marriages. In fact, Justice Kennedy's majority decision expressly rules that out, but how do you get the Fox News crowd to actually read a Supreme Court decision full of big words?
On the other hand, marriage as a civil-secular institution -- that is, "married" as a legal status -- should not be denied to gay folks based on any religious denomination's definition of marriage. I may not be able to get a Catholic marriage, but my marriage by a Unitarian pastor (or a Justice of the Peace) will give my spouse and me all the legal status as a couple married in a Catholic mass.
On the polygamy discussion, I agree with everything you said. Gay marriage and polygamy are not comparable. But I suspect that before long people will see that this has been a straw-man argument all along. Does anyone (other than Fox Newz) really believe there is going to be a rising grass-roots movement to legalize polygamy? (Or legalizing marrying your dog or a 7 year old or whatever other nonsense pops into their dim heads?) I suspect that in a very short time all the heated discussions about polygamy will die out when people realize that there just aren't many people interested in doing it.
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