Well, I only have one personal example of orientation-based discrimination and how the government changed that, but I will be glad to share it with you.

So, I have three moms. My dad remarried after my mother came out of the closet as a lesbian. Now legally, since they divorced, the closest thing my mother had (up until January 6th, 2015) to a legal guardian was my grandmother. This means that if my mother were to be incapacitated due to some sort of an accident or illness, her mother would be allowed to speak for her. There were a few things that my mother did to ensure that the house/will/etc included her life partner, but up until gay marriage was legalized in Florida, hospital visitation rights fell to her mother if she were incapacitated. And her mother, my grandmother, is a staunch Catholic Christian.

She has made it very clear that she does not approve of their relationship, and that if she gets the chance, she will do everything in her power to keep my mother's life partner away from her. If my mother were in a coma, or suffered from dementia or any sort of similar illness, her life partner (now wife) would not be allowed to be with her as she died.

It never came to that, but the government, through a U.S. district court, has made it so that they could (and did) marry. Now, if such an accident were to happen, they could at least comfort each other until the end.

You say that such rights are at the bottom of a long list, and I agree that even for us, there were and are higher priorities than gay rights. In her community, she wasn't at risk of being killed for her orientation. However, problems such as having a job, healthcare, government spying, etc. will always be problems. They may go away for a time, but we live in a world of finite resources with a growing population, so there will always be growing pains somewhere.

Legal rights battles, however, can be won, and will stay won. Nobody is bothering you about Women's right to vote anymore are they? Nobody is campaigning for the repeal of Jim Crow laws. This property alone should bump them up your list a bit, but even if they aren't high on your list, why must you complain that they are high on my list?

As I said before, there are more problems than we can possibly fix, but furthermore, multiple problems can be addressed at once. The district court legalizing gay marriage or blocking an RFRA like this aren't going to stop the Senate from passing a bill on the NSA. My happiness is not hurting your happiness.