Mars is a rock useful for many things, no doubt, but not for humans to live on. As challenging as it seem right now, Venus' problems are solvable, and it just happens to offer the necessary conditions for humans to live on and avoid speciation. If this kind of terrestrial gravity was nowhere to be found but on a planet somewhere as distant as Pluto, we'd still had to go for that (and be thankful for it to exist in our Solar system at all) instead of going for Mars-sized planet and orbit. It just fascinates me that it happens to be the closest us. Humanity will get there and will learn a lot from the process, which is nearly a must-have experience for any further much costlier colonization endeavor on another planetary system.