“And religious intolerance is not to be tolerated.”
We don’t tolerate human sacrifice.
We don’t tolerate peyote ceremonies.
We don’t tolerate Santeria animal torture.
So I go ahead and take the position that we certainly may be religiously intolerant, particularly when the rights of U.S. citizens are being violated.
The children at the place are U.S. citizens and have a right to protection by law.
If we play “see no evil, hear no evil” every time someone claims a religious exemption, we are going to have to wink at an awful lot of crime.
As for keeping quiet until it is all sorted out, by talking about it, we are sorting it out. That’s how I see it.
Three cheers!
While I agree with your general premise, that just calling
something a religion doesn’t give a pass on illegal activity, one of your examples is incorrect.
We do tolerate peyote use by registered members of American Indian religions. However, the case that caused the laws making this use of peyote legal was one in which the Supreme Court ruled that anti-peyote laws that did not have this exclusion were still good laws.
That is we have a right to say “too bad, your religion wants to do X but we have a law against X and you can’t do it.”
A majority of the Congress felt Indians deserved to be able to take Peyote. I don’t think this special law has been challenged on Constitutional grounds, as it sure seems like both a violation of the equal protection clause and the establishment clause.
Probably nobody is mean-spirited enough to go after this law that way.