Another good reason is that it would disarm the bigots because if they refused to allow gay couples to have the same benefits as heterosexual couples, they would be exposed as bigots (they wouldn't be able to hide behind the religious right and claim that God ordains that gay couples should not have the same rights as heterosexual couples).

The advantage to using a term such as "civil union" is that you eliminate the word marriage from the legal system. This word is used in churches and you need to seperate church from state. Therefore, if a church tries to say they are against gay marriage, the answer is simply marriage is not recognized in state. You are free to practice marriage in your churches. It is very important that with a civil union, both straight and gay couples be granted ALL of the same rights though.

When someone says "I went to my cousin's Christening the other day", does the sentence provide any info with regard to the gender of the cousin? No.

So how about we have a different word for the Christening of Boys, and another one for that of Girls?

What you fail to understand is that the problem in your description (i.e being able to understand the sexes involved) lies within the English language itself.

In the English language, the Definite Article "THE" is used to describe both male and female subjects. The same applies for the Indefinite Articles "A" and "AN". So in my above sentence, my subject is "the cousin" or "a cousin", which does not disclose the gender of that cousin.

In other languages however, such as Latin based, some European and Balkan languages (and probably a lot more in the whole world), the Definite and Indefinite Articles are slightly different between the male and the female.

For example, if I was to say my first sentence in Greek and "my cousin" refers to a female, I would say "i ksaderfi mou". But if it referred to a male cousin, I would have to say "o ksaderfos mou". Also note how the end syllable changes from -i to -os. So from the beginning of the sentence you already know the sexes of those involved. The word "Christening" or "Baptism" doesn't need to indicate that.

Which leaves the word "Christening" free and able to indiscriminately describe the institution regardless of the sex of the subject involved.

If what you are trying to do is amend this weakness of the English Language by proposing to have completely different words describing the same process/ceremony/institution/contract depending on the gender of those involved, then something tells me you haven't thought this through... :o)

If, on the other hand, you are only preoccupied with preventing the word marriage being used by gay people, and you don't care about the other institutions or the linguistic shortfall, then you are a bigot.

I gotta admit its a good idea, but it just won't work. The government will still not grant the rights given to married couples. Gay marriage should be completely legal, the using of a new word would take just as long and some people may think this kind of union as inferior.