This is a terrible thing. Now when someone calls you gay you can't just say, "I'm married".
I wish gays would have fought this from a different angle and said that marriage is a religious institution and that the government has no business being involved in religion or deciding who is worthy to be joined as a couple. I would have actively fought for that but instead they took the whiney "but it's not fair" route.
Gay activists have flat rejected civil unions that are literally identical to state-enforced marriage contracts except in name, the m-word, and they've done it on principle (a "I want it really, really badly, therefore I should have it" principle). This is because they want to mimic and mock the religious heterosexuals that hate them, to get back at religion.
They went after the m-word,
marriage, specifically
because it's a religious institution.
It isn't about equality, it's about winning, it's about beating religion. The bible says homosexuality is an abomination, a sin, and they have to win against religion, Christianity in particular, in order to mock religion, in order to thumb their noses at religion. It’s also a desperate desire to be seen as a normal, “traditional family,” despite the fact marriage means a traditional effect of religious-based monogamy. They think it is hilarious and delightful to make bible beaters uncomfortable, the more uncomfortable the better. That'll show 'em. It's about inflicting pain on one’s enemies.
They think if they can tear down the religious objection, there's nothing stopping them from being celebrated and embraced as normal. They are, of course, wrong.
This whole thing has transcended mere legal equality and the convenience of standard-form contracts, which is what they claim they wanted all along, and crossed into ceremonial jealously and childish revenge. And there will be a backlash over it. There always is for something that is forced upon people. Always.