The parallels between gay activism today and "equal rights" activism in the 1960's are quite striking, except the older activists have been quoted as objecting to the connection. An important semantic aspect to the debate is whether gay activists are asking for "equal rights" or "special rights" (i.e., whether current activists have a legitimate connection to earlier activists).

Regardless, I completely agree that the Senate has better things on which to be spending its time than arguing about a constitutional ammendment that has zero chance of going anywhere.