The problem with sex that I raised isn't that the desire is inherently wrong. The problem is egregious hypocrisy. That's why most spiritual people (monks, saints, ascetics) renounce sexuality, because the prospect of being monumentally hypocritical irks them. That's not a problem for consumers, though, since we're used to lying to ourselves and to everyone else.
Nothing wrong with being an animal, you say? I'm sure animals would appreciate that cheap, verbal support that nevertheless conflicts slightly with humanity's treatment of the animal kingdom. Say there's nothing wrong with being an animal to the animals we've enslaved, hunted, eaten, and exterminated to progress as people who deem themselves to have metaphysically transcended animality.
The difference between the religionists and secullarists regarding their attitude towards animals is that the former are brazen enough to tell the truth about their arrogant conviction that humans are superior to animals (because we're supposedly made in God's image and are higher in the Great Chain of Being), whereas secularists pretend to be more compassionate and humble even when we presuppose that we and our consumer society progress by devouring every inch of the planet. The difference is how the hypocrisy manifests itself.
I don't think secular humanists know anything when it comes to human rights. They think they have a secular basis for rights, but that's based more on presumption than on an adequate case. Secular philosophers have tackled the problem, and the result is roughly postmodernity, the sarcastic, cynical acknowledgement that there's no compelling answer to the likes of Nietzsche, but we've got to pretend we deserve to be free and happy, even though these values are subjective and irrational.
Thomas Hobbes, practically the founder of social contract theory, recognized the problem posed by the death of God, since he thought we'd need a substitute in the form of a human tyrant to guarantee human rights, to make the contract more than a worthless piece of paper or an empty verbal agreement.
