And there's the rub.
Because rights means both what most of us intuitively know it to mean (something along the lines of "claims that can be legally enforced by someone against another person or an entity") AND what you can enforce.
Those two, unfortunately, aren't the same (perhaps because law has become so vast, technical and confusing?).
However, that difference is also the source of possible resolution to the problem that interests us. What's being enforced, today, as our rights, consists of Lawmoe's and MNMom's comments &c. But, what you and most of us intuit about what's fundamentally correct in this area of law (presumptive actually equality) -- although it's not enforceable at this time because it's not statutory -- is at least arguable in court. (It passes what's sometimes referred to as the "laugh test" or "sniff test". This means that it's not a lunatic argument, a la, someone coming into court to argue for the "rights" of Martians to marry their poodles.)
What makes this important is that it puts the onus for the development of law (not statutes ... although citizen activism with their legislators would have the same effect, and is what is usually argued for as the proper approach to change in our situation) squarely where it belongs in a constitutional republic: On citizens who will simply make up their minds what kind of people they are, and go fight for what they know is right ... even though the results are not predictable (if the results were predictable, there'd be no fight).
In the final analysis, the answer to your question is, in some sense, "It's up to you." Of one thing, I am absolutely certain: Nothing is as intimidating to politicians and bureaucrats as citizens who make up their minds to politely but uncompromisingly tell them, "No."
There's no playbook that tells us how to be grown ups. There's no playbook that tells us how to be free citizens. We have to make it up. It's not easy to face that kind of resposibility. It'd be a lot easier if somebody else would do the job for us. But, none us believe the Good Witch of the North is going to come send us home to Kansas. It's up to us to work hard and fix this mess. But we can do it .... just as surely as we (through our elected representatives) messed it up in the first place.
So, as was said in The Shawshank Redemption: "It's time to get busy living, or get busy dying."