Well... You are proposing that "the government" - by which you mean every state and county in the United States - should stop issuing "marriage licenses," every justice of the peace in the United States should stop performing "marriages," and instead the government - at all levels - should instead just register civil unions. You're proposing that every federal, state, and local ordinance in the United States that references "marriage" be amended to address "civil unions" instead (or "domestic partnerships," or "jelly doughnuts," if you prefer - but not "marriage"). That the filing category for the IRS be amended to "partnered, filing separately."
I'd be OK with that. But the poor, abused, discriminated against Christian majority in this nation would go absolutely ballistic. By and large, they want - no, they demand - that male/female 1:1 unions be treated differently, as "special." They would not be happy just conferring their own, religious imprimatur (of "holy matrimony," in most Christian traditions); they want the state to sanction what they're doing.
Puberty blockers are not surgery - although I tend to think they are, in general, a bad idea. I tend to agree that the Europeans, by and large, have the right approach to surgical interventions.
Yeah well, it wasn't a Democrat who forced the phrase "black jobs" into the Presidential race, was it?
Strawman argument. If you have an issue with specific federal policies or programs, spell them out. In the absence of same, what you're offering here is a fancified version of "Keep the gummint's hands off my Social Security!"
A key here - a necessary policy change - is for the federal government to take control of all outstanding student loan debt, and all future student loan debt, and reduce the annual interest rate to 1% (or less). Higher education is an investment in America's future - it should not be a profit center for the financial industry.
Once we stop allowing rapacious financial corporations to exploit students and their parents, then we need to move on to targeted loan forgiveness - Austinfan's instincts here aren't bad - but they treat symptoms, rather than the underlying problem.
Beyond that, states, in particular, need to suck it up and support their public higher education sectors - especially the community college sectors, which deliver "lower division (100 and 200 level) college courses much more efficiently than most baccalaureate institutions. States need to require that their state-supported four-year institutions accept transfer credits from community colleges without playing games, without attaching fees, etc.