To the contrary, athelas. It’s a claim, a complaint that they have rights X which have been violated.
A case from a few miles from here, 32 years ago: a power and lights company had a really nice program, where you got raises every few years, and were considered for promotion if you’d worked at a given job title satisfactorily for X years.
So what’s the problem? Well, it just so happens that all the employees in the bottom job classification were black, and their maximum pay rate was below the beginning pay rate for the other low level position, all of whom by sheer coincidence happened to be white – and the latter one was the one you needed to work at to be considered for a supervisory position.
Racial discrimination? Oh, no. The blacks, you see, did not have the necessary qualifications to be hired at the second-lowest job title, the one with the higher pay and the chance for promotion.
For some strange reason, SCOTUS did not buy this explanation, and found that there was pervasive racial discrimination going on. (I gather the company has changed significantly over the three decades since that case.)
The ideal of course, is laws that give equal treatment, without reference to extraneous conditions and traits, not merely of some generic standard, but of what people might wish to do in the pursuit of happiness.
For all any of us know, as certitude, there may well be a God who finds oral and anal sex disgusting and unnatural, and Who thinks that marriage should be between one man and one woman. But your beliefs or mine as to whether there is such a God, and if so, if he actually holds those views, should not be legally binding on people who believe otherwise.
Nor are your tastes or mine as to what one finds gross or disgusting to be taken as standards that compel people to refrain from things that we find gross or disgusting. At least in private – and there’s a “reasonable man” standard for public actions.
It’s that “equal treatment in the pursuit of happiness” concept that defeats the argument that everybody has the same rights – to, being presently unmarried and at or beyond the age of consent, be able to marry someone of the opposite sex who is not a close relative and who has attained the age of consent. This works just fine for non-incestuous adult heterosexuals – but the right to marry the person with whom you fall in love is present only for them. For a gay person who feels about his/her intended exactly as you felt or feel about your bride/bridegroom-to-be, the right to marry the one you love is absent. That he or she has “exactly the same rights as you” becomes a canard – he or she does not have the right to marry for love, to legalize his/her desire to marry the person to whom he/she is sexually and romantically attracted in a binding, socially recognized institution.
Now, theoretically legislatures exist to pass laws needed for fair governance of the body politic. But I can introduce you to a perceptive 11-year-old girl who can give you chaper and verse on how that theoretical ideal does not work out in practice. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a legislator will do what he thinks will get him the most votes, not examine the arguments searchingly for which is most just.
The courts, on the other hand, are isolated from the whim of the voter specifically so that they may dispense justice – and most importantly, so that the rights of the individual will be protected. Joe Perp may be self-evidently guilty as Hell, but our traditions, enshrined in the Constitution, is that he gets a fair trial first. Ron Rabblerouser may have the stupidest ideas since the Anti-Masonic Party went out of business – but he has the freedom to speak them to anyone he can get to hold still to listen to him. Suzi Crystalshaman may believe that aliens from Zeta Reticuli have told the Ultimate Secrets of the Universe to an illiterate goatherder in Bhutan – but she has the same right to those beliefs as the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church does to his.
If in America there is the right to marry the person you love, subject only to age and anti-incest restrictions, then two gay people have the right to marry. If the U.S. Constitution or a State constitution states a glittering generality about freedom and liberty, then the courts are honor-bound to enforce it. Freedom of speach means nothing if it merely the freedom to engage in socially acceptable speech; freedom of religion means nothing if one can be compelled to follow one religion’s standards.
Prior to 1967, it was the public policy of the Commonwealth of Virginia that one could contract marriage only with a member of the opposite sex of the same race as oneself. SCOTUS declared that unconstitutional. It’s interesting to note that the Commonwealth’s attorneys advanced the argument above – that the law did not contravene the Fourteenth Amendment since it applied to all people equally. Earl Warren wrote that “Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry … resides with the individual and cannot be abridged by the State.” (388 U.S. 12)