Please Gilly, learn to read more closely. I said it was heading that way.
They're just a distration Gilly. None of what they're doing really matters, because the only rights they're missing out on is the right to pretend they're just like heterosexual couples. Why do they want to do that anyway? To get a few tax breaks, be "legally recognized", whatever? It's not at all like the civil rights issues blacks faced, or even women. And if they don't say anything about their sex lives, nobody would even know for sure they were gay. Sure, some fruity-acting people might get discriminated against, but it's because they're fruity-acting, not because they're gay
The mayor of the town I live in is gay. Why that's common knowledge, I don't know. If he was married and liked to have kinky sex with his wife, would that be common knowledge? Doubtful. I'm saying the issue is insignificant compared to just about any other issue you can think of, and I don't know many people who are that interested in other people's sex lives.
Of course he can get all riled up about it, and protest and crap, but no it isn't about basic human rights at all. It's more about flaunting their private lives in public and expecting to be recognized for it. Should bigamists or pedophiles or polyamorous groups or anyone else that has different from normal sexual preferences be given the same legal rights and treatment?
Or perhaps sex that has nothing to do with families and children need not have any legal benefits or recognition? The reason heterosexual marriage is supported is for the benefit of children. B&D likes to refer to heterosexual couples as "breeders" and really that's why there are tax breaks for couples, and why they can buy property together and so on. Back when women had a hard time buying and holding property this protected her if she was widowed for instance.
Now to address what I would do in his shoes is impossible because to be in his shoes I could not be me. I'd have to be someone else entirely, with different values, different concerns, and I can't even imagine without being something completely foreign to myself.