I agree with you to a point, in that often those issues are trumped up beyond their actual impact on people's day to day lives and are used as distractions from other more significant issues. I disagree though in principle as an individual's stance on those issues are typically correlated with their thoughts on many others. For example, if someone objects to abortion on religious grounds, I can probably safely presume to know a bit more about their other beliefs. Clearly that's not a hard fast, concrete truth, but there's a likelihood.
Also, I actually think making voting decisions based on one or two concrete policy stances (whether they seem insignificant to someone else) is about as mature and informed a decision that most voters are capable of. It's impractical, and frankly absurd, to expect the average 20 yr old (like those in this thread...often the loudest) to have a comprehensive understanding of the nuances and subtleties of politics, which is why these arguments ultimately devolve into gross generalities and chest beating. Just because you aren't gay and looking to marry your partner or because you aren't a young woman contemplating abortion, that doesn't mean that there aren't some people to whom those things matter a great deal (just using those two issues as en example, you could use any). I think it better for someone to vote on an issue or two that are personally important to them, rather than to vote from a wishy-washy, vague comprehensive "death to big government and taxes" or the opposite equivalent liberal place.
Politics are complicated. The very nature of democracy is compromise, and when considering mutually exclusive concepts (i.e. abortion is legal, or it isn't...a binary, no such thing as half-legal) there really isn't a compromise. That's true with many things, and I'd rather people vote for specifics instead of, "well, I was raised in a conservative (or liberal) household so I'll stick with the home team from here on out".
I know that's rambling and possibly barely coherent, but whatever.