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Notes -
Except that pretty much all of our "culture war" issues are more "metaphysical" than they are "material" — and are equally so on both sides.
The existence of "inalienable human rights" is not a material question. Unlike your radioactivity example, there's no Geiger counter for detecting the presence or absence of, say "the universal right to free speech."
While they may not be as explicit as in the case of the anti-gay-marriage side, the pro-gay-marriage side is just as grounded in metaphysical commitments. On the question of "is there a universal human right to free speech?" both the answers, "yes" and "no", are metaphysical commitments. And if no positions based on metaphysical commitment cannot be "placed as support for state policy," then the state must reject both answers — and what does that even look like?
It's impossible for any state to be truly neutral on metaphysical commitments; the attempt appears to mean that victory goes to whoever can keep there metaphysics as implicit and hidden as possible. And again, that means those whose metaphysics aren't explicitly grounded in theological beliefs (often, it seems to me, because they aren't grounded in anything) get to win over those who are. Which, again, equates to religious versus "secular."
The state is still picking sides on metaphysics, it's just picking the side that pretends not to have any.
I posted an argument, by toy analogy, a year ago here. The tl;dr is that "hat teleology can constitute a valid "joint" upon which reality may be "cleaved," particularly when it comes to law" even in an imperfect, entropic universe.
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