The only rights that really exist are the ones you can assert for yourself, so when people talk about human rights and animal rights and gay rights and constitutional rights I tend to roll my eyes and stop listening. For example, the right to privacy. It has been repeatedly noted as a constitutionally guaranteed right by the Supreme Court, most notably in Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade. But that didn’t stop congress from passing the Patriot Act. Of course, there are many, many examples of “inalienable rights” being arbitrarily swept away by the very institutions that are meant to guarantee them, as soon as protecting the rights becomes inconvenient (suspension of habeus corpus in the civil war, internment of Japanese citizens in WWII, among others).
When people talk about rights, what they’re really talking about is power. Rights are an expression of freedom, freedom from the restricting influence of others. This is why the constitution contained a guarantee that the government wouldn’t make a law abridging the right to bear arms- it was a guarantee that people would still have recourse to forceful means of self-assertion after a hard-fought war for independence from a tyrannous regime.
So if you really believe in rights for certain individuals or groups or for you, I would suggest developing the means for guaranteeing those rights yourself. Money and political influence are helpful. Carry yourself in a way that will make people want to support you. Forceful resistance to attempts to violate your rights should at least be considered, although it’s obviously not always practical or appropriate. Remember: if somebody is powerful enough to violate your rights with impunity, and will gain from doing so, then violate your rights they will. It’s a fact which has repeated itself over and over through history: appeals to abstract justice are ignored in favor of tangible benefits. So… be practical!