But you're either extremely forgetful or extremely insensitive to suggest that not being able to get legally married is the same as facing guns, attack dogs, lynch mobs and jail cells;

Strange...gay people are still facing guns, attack dogs, lynch mobs, and jail cells. And just as blacks had to deal with Jim Crow laws, we have to deal with atrocities like Colorado's Amendment 2 which sought to make it legal to discriminate against gay people and make it illegal for gay people to do anything about it.

One of the new Republican Senators recently elected feels that doctors who perform abortions should be given the death penalty. What do you think he's going to try and do to the legal status of gay people?

that homophobia is fundamentally the same as racism in its antecedents and practices;

In many cases, it is. It stems from a feeling of superiority over the inferior, envisioning gay people as something less than human, coupled with a biblical mandate to feel that way. Sounds an awful lot like some of the etiology of racism.

and that the attempt to legislate recognition of same-sex marriage is linked to some life-or-death struggle in the way that overturning Jim Crow laws was linked to the basic right of African Americans not to be spit on, beaten, jailed, or murdered.

So Loving v. Virginia has no connection to Jim Crow laws?

No poor queer eats because of a marriage law;

Actually, they do. There are poor gay people who would receive the significant monetary benefits of marriage and thus be able to eat.

no (uncoupled) queer gets better medical care because of a marriage law;

Actually, they do. Not everybody lives in a state that has laws requiring insurance policies to cover domestic partners.

no queer teenager stops getting fag-baited because of a marriage law.

Of course not. But then again, black people didn't stop getting lynched because of Loving v. Virginia. Should it not have been fought for? And are you seriously saying that miscegenation laws had nothing to do with racism?

Focus your political efforts there if you want, but let's try to avoid being *too* grand about what's really at stake.

On the contrary, you need to start realizing that it is grander than you think.