I recognize that there is a need for these provisions, but I feel that they need to be separated from as loaded a term as marriage is, and should not necessarily have any of the 'requirements' that marriage has.

Certainly infrastructure would need to be in place for these provisions; I suggest that civil partnership be used for this. The only limitations I would place on civil partnership would be that all partners involved must be sound of mind and at or above the age of majority. There need not even be any romantic connotations with the partnership.

In this model, marriage is romance/spirituality but not legally binding, and civil partnership is legally binding. If you want to get married, you find a church or secular organization that will conduct a marriage ceremony for you- but that gains you no rights or special status in respect to the law, and the requirements and parameters for the marriage are set by the organization performing it. If you wish for legal benefits such as those you noted, you enter a legally binding civil partnership with the other party/parties involved. The two are not mutually exclusive; you could have both a marriage and a civil partnership with the other member(s) of your relationship, you could have one or the other, or neither.

Existing marriages and civil unions would be 'automatically' granted a civil partnership under this model. This gets the government out of marriage entirely, purges the gay marriage issue from politics, and does so without sacrificing any of the rights that current spouses enjoy and without stepping on any toes.

Sure, a given church or secular organization may not recognize your marriage as legitimate if you don't fit into their definition of marriage, and they're free to do so- it's not as if any given church recognizes anything any other religion does as remotely legitimate anyway- but your status within a civil partnership would be protected by law.