So this is just thinking out loud (like before), and might be a bit long-winded, so sorry about that. But inalienable human rights is a bit like the existence of god was back in the day. It's (socially) difficult to deny that universal human rights "exist", even though it's just politics about how you should treat or should not be allowed to treat people (and which people in which ways). So if something can successfully be claimed to be a human right — and it's always a political struggle what gets into that position and what doesn't, not a matter of "that's just the way it is" — then that removes it from the arena of (legitimate) political discussion, or at least makes it a lot safer than other more "every day things".

The UN declaration of human rights says, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights", but that's clearly not true, as some people are born straight into grinding poverty or actual slavery. What the declaration can be said to mean is "well, people should not be enslaved or otherwise treated badly in this or that way". But the "human beings are born free" is just a secular — though equally idealistic — way to say what the US declaration of indepence put in religious terms, "all men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights".

The difficulty with human rights talk is — at least for me — that of course I think some things should most definetely be protected from the whims of everyday politics more than other things. People lives and people's bicycles should not be on the same line. Even if they're both important, they shouldn't be equally important. Today one of the most effective ways to protect things is to campaign for them as a human right, even though personally I don't find it intellectually honest all the way. To me it's almost the same as to say, "God wants it this way" (which is another way of removing issues from the arena of politics in societies where religion is hegemonic). Pragmatically I won't be arguing most of the time, "don't you realise there's no 'human rights', the only thing there is is political struggle about who gets what (not necessarily in a narrow interest group sense)", even though that's closer to what I think than the human rights discourse is.

So I guess my (tentative) idea here is that — without commenting about its good or bad consequences — TRAs have managed to attach their political aims to the human rights discourse, which gives them an extra protective layer: now it's not just another interest group whining anymore. It wasn't inevitable, but it was hardly surprising either because — at least so it seems to me — it does have similarities with ending the (legal) discrimination of homosexuals, language minorities etc., and at first glance the logic is compelling: if these other groups already have human rights, why not this other group that looks awfully similar?

Something like that :-)