rsync isn't trying to include .gvfs even with the -x option. It along with find(1), etc., has to be able to do some things with .gvfs to even work out it is the mount point of another filesystem and shouldn't be descended into further. Those things fail in a way that they never should with Unix semantics for root. You're just seeing other symptoms of the same underlying problem; FUSE's configuration not allowing root to do anything, as it normally can. But this bug report isn't the place for discussion, I suspect. I just wanted to clarify that there isn't a further bug.
rsync isn't trying to include .gvfs even with the -x option. It along with find(1), etc., has to be able to do some things with .gvfs to even work out it is the mount point of another filesystem and shouldn't be descended into further. Those things fail in a way that they never should with Unix semantics for root. You're just seeing other symptoms of the same underlying problem; FUSE's configuration not allowing root to do anything, as it normally can. But this bug report isn't the place for discussion, I suspect. I just wanted to clarify that there isn't a further bug.