I know, right? That's what I tried to tell him. He was concerned about getting lost in all of the agenda driving narratives. People clearly care. To what degree and why? That's on them.
This was a major culture war issue and my side 1) picked the wrong strategy (should have favored civil unions in the 1980's) 2) barely whimpered in protest as the SC redefined marriage. Almost every time gay marriage was put on the ballot, it was defeated - even in Ca. Then the SC invalidated the will of the people on that - favoring granting equal status to homosexuals in terms of marriage rights over what people voted for. People will be arguing the legal aspects of that 100 years from now. In addition, sodomy laws are hard to defend from a perspective of belief in absolute individual rights like privacy. I think when those laws were still in place, the leaders on my side of the issue wanted to retain them under the "don't give an inch to prevent the mile" theory, but they missed that the goal was marriage equality. By the time they realized what the real game was, they had lost the framing of the issue, and the SC, rightly or wrongly, decided to take this issue out of culture and settle it with law.
For most of US history we had a secular democracy existing along side a society dominated by Judeo-Christian values and morality. There is plenty of evidence (particularly in the Federalist Papers) indicating that the Constitution was written with the assumption that society would operate from those values/morality and that the radical freedoms granted to people had to be restrained by each individual's inner character and social mores.
We live in a very different society now. While those ascribing to Judeo-Christian values are a plurality, they are not a majority, and while we are a republic, as opposed to a pure democracy, majority opinion is still a very powerful force and tends to carry the day unless it is imposing on others' rights. So, our constitution has to be adapted to a more secular population. Since we are talking values and morality, these things work very well when they are the personal convictions of people. They do not work well when they are forced by government on people. As a general rule, our government doesn't do that, but every law that is passed by a legislative body or done by judicial fiat carries with it a moral element. A law says, "this is good and that is bad". So, in that sense, the adage that you can't legislate morality is false. Legislating morality is what legislation does. The question is: whose morality is being legislated?
So, I think we are experiencing some growing pains as our constitution is being adapted to a more secular society with different moral standards than our constitution was designed for. Plenty of people on my side of the homosexuality issue feel a sense of loss and hope for the country, fear that the TNF will become largely extinct, and that there will be a general slide into a moral morass.
Our neighbors to the north in Canada show us where progressive-left governments go. A pastor was arrested up there a few weeks ago for having an outdoor service after the church was seized by the government under COVID mandates. They have "hate speech" laws that a person could violate the law for, say, having a moral objection to homosexuality. A pastor could be charged for something he teaches from the Bible.
I think my side senses that this is where the Left is taking us. Homosexuality is just one of the issues in the culture war that we have pretty much lost. But for most of those people, they don't take their moral cues from government or law. We have to remember that our government and law once said that it was legal and moral to own another human being. Government is very fallible in it's judgment. Judeo-Christian morality has a 5000 year history that it can be judged by. Leftist morality and philosophy has about 130 years of history, and, frankly, it is a pretty abysmal record, but it certainly has momentum right now.
But, to answer your question, this is why this matters.