I’m posting this on behalf of Quest Blogger: Jamie Ravenet, Washington DC  

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Gay pride and gay marriage (and equal rights for gay people in general) are so closely related it's actually hard to tease them apart. I'll prove it to you. 
Why do gay people want to get married? Maybe they don't! Not all of us anyway. But the majority of us want the RIGHT to get married at least. And the right to have equal treatment for our families. What we are seeking when we say "equal rights" is equal treatment from the institution of the government. 
So why are we looking for that? The only answer can be that, at the very minimum, we don't feel that we have it already, and there is no good reason for this difference of treatment. Whether or not this is true is another debate (though I'm definitely in the camp that says we are not treated equally). 
Do you think the American government's policies toward gay people and straight people are equal? I'm gonna guess you don't, because you pointed out specifics about differences between the way straight couples and gay couples are treated at the legal level. Also, you went out of your way to go to another country, one which does not have discrimination at the institutional level like ours does, in order to demonstrate to your partner "that you are committed and dedicated to being him for the rest of your lives". Do you feel that you ought to have the right to have your own country acknowledge that? 
Gay pride is the every-day personal response to the shame that other would cast upon us. Gay marriage is the political outcome (which is only one kind of outcome among many) of gay pride. This doesn't make gay marriage a shallow political issue (and indeed, no one should be getting married just to prove a point!) This is how the personal becomes political. When your personal life is discounted, shunned, or otherwise slighted by the prevailing school of thought, acknowledging that a) the prevailing school of thought can be flat out wrong, and b) you have the same rights as heterosexual people to seek, maintain, and have recognized by your friends, family, and the government, that exact life, turns the personal political. Or, being gay ISN'T bad, it's just different, and that difference should be tolerated and possibly even celebrated! Do you think being gay makes you a bad person?
Are you out to your family? If you are, you must have felt the pressure of telling the truth about yourself to them. What drove that? Wasn't there even the slightest sense of wanting them to know that you want to be treated like anyone else would be?
Furthermore, gay pride isn't parades. and it isn't "lesbians shaking naked titties on floats while gay guys slather themselves up with lube...". Gay Pride isn't a weekend in June! It's what happened to allow us to HAVE the parade. It's fighting the power that tells us that we ARE bad people because we fall in love with others of the same gender. It is telling ourselves and others the truth about something that has been dramatically maligned to prove that gay people are everywhere and are being discriminated against. It's saying "hey, whatever these people do, I don't care because they are consenting adults, and it has nothing to do with me!" AND it is celebrating the fact that they have the RIGHT to do that. Which they do. Don't you agree? 
Also, what exactly is so scary about being associated with the people that fete themselves in the parades? 
It sounds to me like you have a little internalized homophobia going on yourself. Do straight people worry that they will be perceived differently because of Mardi Gras or strip bars? What about that show "The Girls Next Door?" I don't think so, or at least not in a larger picture way. The difference is that heterosexual people assume this is their right. Gay people have to learn it on their own.