Animal welfare over humans?

I have been asked a few times now, as I am sure that other people who have great concern for the rights of all animals, if I feel that animal rights are more important than human rights, especially when there is great human suffering in the world. Shouldn't that be more important? Well, my answer is this...

Of course I care about human rights, but I feel that animals have no voice in our society and we treat them as a lesser entity because many of us believe that they are. How do we come to this conclusion?

Here is a perfect example of a totally useless issue that seems to trump human suffering in this world and I don't hear people asking the same question...In California, they are already trying to overturn the legalization of gay marriage by raising millions of dollars to put ads out to make people vote against it. Are you serious? Is THIS more important than human suffering, with people starving across the world...couldn't that money be raised to feed the homeless???

I guess what I am trying to say is that my cause, and many others like me, is for the welfare of the beings that have no voice, so they are taken advantage of, tortured and killed in our society because they aren't the same species when there are people who are consumed with their cause about stopping gay people from marrying...why doesn't someone question that?