Supreme Court ruling of DOMA and Prop. 8 to be decided on 6/26 at 10 AM

So basically, DOMA discourages same sex marriages in the US while Prop 8 bans it completely in California?
Yikes.

DOMA was a bit more complex than that. It helps to remember that the U.S. has two levels of government - State and Federal. DOMA meant that even though the state's said "yes you're married, here are all your rights as a married couple" the federal government in turn said "we don't recognize you as married, you have no rights outside your state". In the case of the woman suing to have DOMA appealed that meant when her wife passed the state acknowledged her as the legal heir, but the internal revenue serve did not, and charged her a massive tax for everything her partner left her ( ~$400k ). Since a hetero couple recognized in their state as married wouldn't have had to pay a dime, she had a very clear case of demonstrable undue burden DOMA was putting on her.

Is it really a victory for an entire country when equality has to be imposed on it by its highest court.

Written that way, no.
But your perspective is skewed - What happened is our highest courts have affirmed that the rules created to explicitly remove rights from citizens and treat them as a secondary class were in fact a violation of the principles upon which our justice system works.

That is most definitely a victory.