Values vs Rules

If you were going to design a perfect society where would you begin? What characteristics define a perfect society? In futuristic movies you see a multicultural (sometimes multi species) caricature of society all getting along, all perusing peace, all with what may seem like the same values.
Is a perfect society founded on values or rules?
That question is easily answerable with the example of California. California is a state that is practically founded on “Progressive” ideas some of which were actually progressive for their time. However, California legislators have made a dangerous substitution, exchanging values for rules.
California legislators continue to stand between parents and children in their upbringing with the liberal agenda being pushing in the public schools system. Beyond that California and the federal government in some cases have minimized the role of parents and even more father in the family unit to such a degree that we now find legislation that mimic morality. Like a prostatic limb legislators have passed and forced laws that common sense was made for. More often than not these laws defy common sense.
That very inconsistency is the mud that law creates when values are absent. Abortion is legal but there is a limit to when you can abort? This inconsistent idea is a slap in the face of rational thought. Lawmakers are defining when life begins arbitrarily though legislation. This sends a mixed signal that right and wrong is completely subjective to who can afford a better arbitrator.
We now see moral issue after moral issue completely blurred because the legitimacy of those issues is up for debate. The irony, for example with same sex marriage is that people who want to maintain the sanctity of marriage between 1 man and 1 woman come from a moral and practical standpoint. How it is ironic is because advocates of same sex marriage declare that their opposition are bigots and homophobic. How can the accused moral down fall of a side by not acknowledging some twisted idea of equality even be relevant when this issue is up for debate only because the morality that was once universal is now obsolete? Obviously if morality is subjective to the majorities ideals then right and wrong, morality, or even ideas of equality are completely subjective and nobody has any rational base to stand on…
So again we have to defer to legislation to decide through deliberation.