it’s a protection of people’s right to equal protection under the law to say that two legally indistinguishable relationships would have different rights? I’m not even sure how that makes sense, and I really can’t see how this makes either side happy.

They aren’t indistinguishable. The marriages that took place before prop 8 was pbumed were legal when they took place. Prop 8 altered the constitution such that any further gay marriages would no longer be legal. From a purely legal standpoint, they were valid. The job of a judge isn’t to make people happy: It’s to adjudicate the law as written as fairly as possible.

Personally, I’m entirely in favor of gay marriage, and have never seen an argument against it that didn’t fundamentally rely on “God says teh gays are ebil” or “I think homosexuality is disgusting and therefore I shouldn’t have to ever think about it or risk my children knowing it exists”*, neither of which are sufficient counterarguments to me.

* – And more often than not, the former is really just an excuse for the latter.