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This was long but I kept it short, given how much I packed in.
 Originally Posted by JKDS
Expense of what rights, and for whom? Are you arguing that letting gays marry, adopt, or visit each other in hospitals is somehow hurting the rest of society?
We must define this correctly. Very few people who are said to be anti-gay are against adoption or visitation rights of gays. There are some, but they're nowhere near the size of people who are against gay marriage.
But gay marriage isn't wrong right? Well, if it was as cut and dried as the media has told everybody, I can't give much reason why it would be. But it's not that cut and dried.
The main measure of antagonism to gay marriage is because of how it is being handled. I don't even mean the legislation from the bench that people hate (even though that's a quality reason), but that other peoples rights are being stepped on, namely religious ones. It is deeply important to many Christians who disagree with homosexuality on a fundamental religious ground that they not be forced to support it, yet due to how this segment of "gay rights" is being handled, many are being forced to support it. Some of their concerns are not legitimate, like those who refuse to sign marriage documents when that's their job. However, they do have legitimate concerns when bakeries are forced to do gay weddings. This is a blatant abuse of religious freedoms, yet it is never framed as such outside of religious circles, probably because blatant abuses of religious freedoms have become commonplace in our country. If these abuses were eliminated, I suspect you would find a huge proportion of antagonists to gay marriage would change their stance, and the claim that gay marriage isn't hurting anybody would then be true.
A second reason propelling antagonism of gay marriage is that it is one of the more explicit policies showing a redefining of marriage. Again, this isn't about what is commonly addressed by the media, for the media has no idea why some Christians are against gay marriage. Well, the main reason why is because to them, marriage isn't about love, it's about family production. They believe that the bedrock of a healthy society is making babies and raising kids, and they support policies that promote that. Gays marrying, however, doesn't engage this ideal. In fact it subverts the ideal; it furthers the idea that making babies and raising kids is less important. This is an issue on which I disagree with the anti-gay-marriage crowd, but it's still important to understand their point. I disagree for a handful of reasons, but the one I'll make here is that family making in a modern world can be about more than having your own babies, and I think it would be reasonable for Christians to embrace gay marriage in that it's an attempt for gays to adopt the mainstream ethic of marriage in the first place. Of course, many Christians would not go for this because they would say that it would be better for gays to still marry the opposite sex so they can make families and just be gay in secret, but I think that's wrong for the same reasons you do.
A third reason is that our current rendition of "gay rights" has been so emboldened that activists commonly oppress and denigrate others just the same that their antecedents were oppressed and denigrated not that many years ago. This is something two different gay media personalities I pay attention to, Milo Yiannopolous and Dave Rubin, have discussed. Many gay activists have so vehemently demanded their own rights that they pay no attention to the rights of others. It's one thing to think a baker who doesn't cater gay weddings is wrong and to point it out, but it's something else entirely to turn them into villains with hateful actions and intentions. I think this is a big reason why there seems to be such a lack of older gay people in these situations. They remember what it was like to be hated and mistreated, and won't engage in the same.
A fourth reason is highly indirect, yet no less important. It involves the concept that helping people comes by liberating them and their society, not by exchanging one set or one group of oppression for another. This is exemplified in things like SCOTUS seeming to advance the liberty of gay people by its ruling. It did advance the liberty of gay people, but the unintended consequences of that decision arguably detracted the liberty of gay people (and all people) by even more because the ruling itself was steeped in a philosophy that has consistently harmed liberty in the long run. Giving gays the ability to marry by federal mandate seems nice for now, but the federal mandate itself on this issue is wrong. If instead the court had ruled that marriage is not a government issue in the first place, many people probably would have said the ruling was hurting gays since it would still allow for some discrimination by private entities, yet in the long run this ruling would have greatly increased the total amount of liberty for all, including gays. Even if you disagree with this example, my point stems from the philosophy of limited government, which has always been believed to be integral to the existence of liberty. The SCOTUS ruling on gay marriage was not an example of limited government.
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