Here is the problem with getting rid of the "Gay Marriage Issue".
It is crucial to mobilizing a key segment of [mostly] religious conservatives, many of whom don't understand economic issues or foreign policy beyond talking points about socialism and terrorism.
While I commend Redfish for wanting to get beyond these pointless wedge issues, he might be underestimating the strategic genius of the Reagan Revolution, which was the engine behind the Think Tank and Talk Radio revolution (designed to convince Americans that their country had been stolen by immoral, God-hating communists). Point is: morality/religion was the Right's populist answer to the Left, which attempted to attract poor voters with working class issues and social justice.
Remember: Reagan rarely went to church prior to his campaign for president. As governor of California, he passed the most liberal abortion law the nation had ever seen. However, in order to win the presidency, he needed to break the Left's New Deal Coalition , which united the deeply conservative South and Heartland regions since 1932 (see the "Solid South"). The primary tool for converting Dixiecrats and the Bible Belt conservatives was conservatism, i.e., religion and tradition. This strategy took advantage of the Left's pivot from traditional working class issues to lifestyle issues (which waged war on the nuclear family).
Reagan grew up as a New Deal Democrat. He campaigned for Truman. However, corporate America (mostly Big Oil who was afraid of Carter's alternative energy agenda) gave Reagan a path to the presidency, and that path was through a partnership with Pat Robertson and conservatism. Reagan's partnership with the Moral Majority was not some genuine political movement, it was a brilliant strategy for scaring conservatives into the voting booth using wedge issues like gay marriage.
Even though gay marriage is a distraction from the most pressing issues of our time, it is absolutely necessary for the Republican Movement, which uses conservatism to get poor people to vote for the narrow special interests of the plutocrats who fund the GOP Machine.