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Dee, you are always trying to prove that your ethical principles are entirely independent of people's attitudes and preferences. Here you are appealing to Alan Gewirth, an ethical rationalist if there ever was one. I admire Gewirth's clarity, his consistency, and his thoroughness; but he's trying to do something that's impossible. At least John is only trying to show that there are some good reasons for ascribing rights to people. I agree with that. Gewirth wants to show that we are guilty of a formal contradiction if we deny that people have rights. Very few professional moral philosophers accepted his argument. Here are a few comments from Kai Nielsen.

Gewirth believes that, since I regard it as essential that my own freedom and well-being be protected, I must, to be consistent, have a like regard for the freedom and well-being of every agent. What he has perhaps shown ... is that agents (that is, each one of us) want and need freedom and well-being and will typically take steps, where necessary, to protect their access to these goods. In that way each individual, or at least each rational individual, regards it as essential that his freedom and well-being be protected. But it doesn't follow that he must believe, if he is rational (Gewirth's sense), that he has a right to his freedom and well-being. He could quite consistently believe that the protection of his own freedom and well-being were for him necessary goods which it was essential for him to protect, if he could, and still, like Bentham, regard talk of rights as nonsense on stilts. [Kai Nielsen, Why Be Moral, p. 252.]

As Nielsen points out, there is no reason why a gangster cannot believe that he needs freedom and well-being to carry out his plans without believing that he has a right to freedom and well-being.

When are you ever going to admit that we have to take responsibility for creating our morality? We can't get it from theology or logic or science. It's up to us to define it and adhere to it.