I agree that it doesn't seem like an entirely rational viewpoint. It's a very deeply personal thing for them. I'm just saying that their opposition to "gay marriage" doesn't necessarily mean they bear animosity toward gay people.
When someone says to me "I oppose gay marriage but I have no animosity towards gay people", I hear "I am unable to recognize my own animosity towards gay people".*
* I suppose that doesn't hold for the abolish-all-marriage or separate-legal-and-religious-marriage folks.
What I'm saying is that, if you talk to them, a surprising number of these people actually are essentially separate-legal-and-religious-marriage proponents. It's not that they want to deprive gay people of anything — they just have a religious act called "marriage" that is between a man and a woman and they feel like somebody is trying to take that away from them. They are fine with a secular institution that is open to gays and is identical to the legal concept of marriage as it exists today — they just don't want it getting mixed up with a religious institution that is very dear to them.
(I'm not saying that everyone who supported Prop. 8 is this way either. Some of them really are hateful folk — but not all of them. What I'm saying is just that if you think everyone who supported Prop. 8 did so because they are spiteful toward gays, you are painting with way too broad a brush. It's a diverse bunch.)
Yeah, I've heard similar things from Prop 8 supporters. But my personal take is that (for some, at least) the very deeply personal thing they feel, which they feel like someone is trying to take away, is actually antipathy towards people and lifestyles which they haven't in the past had to recognize as legitimate.
I am rabidly liberal, think that marriage between two people—regardless of their gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.—should be legal in all 50 states, and also think that the government should get out of the 'marriage' business altogether. For the foreseeable future, we're stuck with the whole marriage thing for better or worse (hah), so we have to make the best of it.
