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Well, would it be discrimination if the government allowed Christians to marry one another and called it a marriage, but if a Christian married a Jew, they called that a civil union?
The whole point of the different name is to brand the mixed marriage with the mark of Cain -- it is a reminder that it may look like the state is offering all the same rights and privileges to disfavored people as it is to the favored class, but isn't REALLY equal. It's equality lite.
As it happens, I am a pragmatist, and I support civil unions as a huge step in the right direction. It's a way to get legal protections for gay families right now, without waiting the generation or two it's going to take to get gay marriage. But in the long run, equality lite won't do, and whether it's 25 or 50 years from now, there will be full marriage rights for gays (or civil unions for everyone, which would also be fine with me).
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