Seems that the only feature that I feel missing in gnome-terminal is
ability to specify color used instead of reversing foreground with
background while displaying selected text. In xterm this is done by setting
highlightColor resource:

from xterm(3)
        highlightColor (class HighlightColor)
                Specifies the color to use for the  background  of
                selected  or  otherwise  highlighted text.  If not
                specified, reverse video is used.
 
I use somethat strange colors for terminals (green on black bg) and 
reversing it looks really ugly to me. It makes my eyes feel sick, besides
it has the same color as cursor, which confuses user. So I use grey40 as
highlight color for xterm and wanted to have the same preference in
gnome-terminal.

As Nalin just told me in private mail, the feature of setting arbitrary
highlight color is available in vte CVS now and will be available in vte
releases since 0.11.11. New function is named
vte_terminal_set_color_highlight. So can you please implement an option in
GUI to select and set highlight color?

PS please don't mix this bug with #69776 - that is about ability to choose
cursor color.