Actually, gays are denied equal rights on many fronts,
I don't dispute that. But the adjustment to accepting this new frontier of equality is complicated by several factors.
In many Canadian provinces, Roman Catholics at one time could choose to send their children to the Catholic school system. By registering this decision, the portion of their property taxes which paid for education was directed to the Catholic school board instead of the public school board.
Except for not giving other denominations (there was no other one as large that sought to run its own schools) the same treatment, this is not considered to be making Roman Catholicism Canada's established church - it is merely an accomodation for a minority; they insist on sending their children to schools run by their church, and so this way they aren't at a disadvantage by having to pay twice for their education.
In the United States, such an equitable arrangement is prevented by current court interpretations of the Establishment Clause in the Constitution. Recently, a reform that is Constitutionally acceptable, school vouchers, has been brought forward, but it is being fought tooth and nail by entrenched interests in many states - such as teachers' unions.
In Canada, and in the United States, some public schools have been using books such as "Heather Has Two Mommies" in classrooms with impressionable young children.
Discriminating against people because of their religion is wrong. Some Americans belong to religions which have the verbal and plenary inspiration of Scripture as one of the tenets of their faith. Avoiding fancy theological jargon, this means that God didn't just inspire the Bible, He proofread it. (And presumably nothing too serious happened to it on the way from the original Scriptures in Hebrew, Aramaic/Chaldaean, and Greek to the King James Version.)
Since Jesus said to turn the other cheek, and intervened to stop a woman from being stoned to death for adultery, there is no valid claim that Christianity calls for violent acts against gays. But that homosexual acts are to be regarded as serious sins was re-iterated in the New Testament; it isn't just something in Leviticus alone that it is hypocritical for Christians who eat pork to accept.
If you take the children of Christians who believe in the verbal, plenary inspiration of the Bible, and at an early age teach them to think of homosexuality as normal and natural, healthy and equal... then they're going to come up against those Bible teachings, and reject their parents' religious faith, because they will have been made constitutionally incapable of believing that a condemnation of homosexual acts as abhorrent could be the perfect and inerrant decree of a just and loving God.
So what?
Well, if I suggested that we do away with terrorism by taking all the children of Muslims away from their parents, and raising them as Christians in boarding schools, wouldn't you think that I was an inhuman monster?
This is different in degree, but it's the same kind of thing. Promoting respect for the rights of homosexuals is being used as an excuse to violate the rights of fundamentalist and evangelical Christian families.
This applies to the teaching of evolution in the schools too - but so far the only suggestions for dealing with that would violate the rights of other families. Hampering science education is not acceptable. Teaching lies to children - that there is any real controversy about evolution - is not acceptable.
But I think that one could teach biology in schools in a culturally sensitive way. Newspaper accounts of crimes that are before the courts often use wording that avoids making statements about the guilt of the accused.
It is not a lie for a biology textbook to refer the the allegations of some scientists about the origin of life without noting that "some" means "virtually all"... with the idea that as long as no statements one way or the other about how likely evolution is the truth are made, neither the facts of biology nor the teachings of the Bible are contradicted.
