When someone exercises a right, in this case to right to decide to whom they will be married, it may be overturning thousands of years of practice. So what? Don't some practices need to be overturned for the sake of equality? Isn't that a good thing.
We can argue that there is or is not a right to marry, but as long as the government sets up benefits and legal restrictions then how do you justify leaving these people out.
"So what"?! What, was "whatever" taken? ... Let's be serious, not flippant. In the abstract yes, some practices"might need to be overturned for the sake of equality. But this isn't slavery. And we're not talking about just "some practice" here. We're talking about redefining a fundamental institution around which civil society has been built for thousands of years. It's a monumental change, not just different wording on a legal document. That's not a small matter of "so what" that should be determined by the interpretive whims of a handful of judges.
As to your equality point, homosexuals are just as free to marry members of the opposite sex as I am. Now that may sound flip but it speaks to the truth about marriage and the practical reason we give it special recognition via law and government policy. The state doesn't legally recognize traditional marriage because the spouses love one another. If so, then you'd have a point about equality. It would be unequal to recognize heterosexual marriage and not homosexual marriage if this was about love. Gays love too, after all. Leaving aside religious traditions for the moment, the state accords legal privileges to marriages because it recognizes the once self-evident benefit to society of promoting stable male and female relationships which in turn build supportive environments for the procreation and nurture of children.
It's not about "leaving people out" -- those benefits and legal restrictions you refer to are all available to gays, they just might have to work a little harder to get them (e.g., write a will).
What it is about, though, is destroying the institution of marriage...and family. Observe what government policy has done to the black family, for cryin' out loud. Perhaps not intentionally, but in effect -- single moms with multiple children by multiple fathers, locked in a cycle of dependency.
Re-writing the laws of marriage -- which have served society so well over the centuries -- will, in the end, have the exact same effect on all families.
Co-habitation will be all about sex...and benefits. Commitment, marriage, motherhood and fatherhood will become artifacts of the past...children will be an "inconvenience", left to the government to raise.
Gay marriage isn't about creating "equal rights" for gays. It's about destroying a society they are alienated from. If you can't recognize this is a cultural war, you're going to help lose it.