@Hearach15
There was a long-standing opposition to same sex marriage in many gay communities - largely gay male communities but not exclusively so (equally there was a long tradition of lesbian Marxist thought that was against gay marriage). Many of the arguments rested on the premise that marriage, as a tradition fundamentally rooted in religious thought, property rights and the subjugation of women, was a patriarchal and heteronormative structure which same/sex relationships ought to be free from and shouldn’t seek to replicate. In fact, many who argued from this position also argued that marriage should be fundamentally abandoned as institutionally and inherently oppressive, and that gay and lesbian couples should be leading the way in encouraging the abandonment of marriage as a social contract.
Second wave lesbian Marxist feminists in particular rejected the history of women’s legal and economic oppression rooted in marriage; and gay men often rejected the religious roots of marriage as a monogamous contract in favour of polyamorous relationships. Many gay people objected to the fundamentally Christian structure of marriage as a contract/social institution in the West, because of the church’s history of homophobia. You may not be aware (especially if you’re in the US), that England has an established church, and that civil marriage was extremely limited in how it could be performed until the early 2000s (only in a registry office by a registrar, and the civil marriage “ceremony” basically followed a truncated version of the Christian marriage service). It was only very recently, historically, that even straight couples could get actually married in a random event location, write their own vows, etc. etc. In that context what you call “marriage equality” looked very different. A faux Christian marriage that symbolised being absorbed into the dominant centre-right-wing Establishment culture was not what many gay people actually wanted. (NB “marriage equality” is very recent American term, not used here even during the period before the legalisation of same sex civil partnerships in the U.K. - which preceded legalising same sex marriage).
Now, as a young lesbian I did tend to come down on the pro same sex marriage side; but I was reasonably undecided, and actually had a lot of sympathy for those who argued against it — particularly for those who objected on the grounds of adopting a cultural symbol of women’s oppression and legal enslavement. The gay community was pretty evenly split at the time to be honest. But I never ever thought such arguments homophobic. I appreciated where they came from, and why. These are longstanding and fully reasoned objections to same sex marriage; and it’s both historically deeply ignorant and offensive to just call them “homophobic” when you have clearly taken no time at all to learn and educate yourself about why many gay people might have opposed it.
FWIW I was delighted when one of my friends had a civil partnership ceremony the first month it was legalised, but I was not at all keen on having one myself. I’ve never wanted to be married; lots of people actually feel that way, both straight and gay.