Are religions that preach inequality for women and gays, traitors to their country?

[The Grand Nudger]

I think that GIA is asking about an uncomfortable (but possibly inevitable) moment. The defining aspect of a genuinely held religious belief is the production of unifying moral content. It is already true and will forever continue to be true that there are religious beliefs that compel their adherents to positions and actions against the interest of our respective countries. We already restrict many of these forms of speech and these forms of expression.

It's not credible to dismiss the notion that a harmful religion might need to be suppressed or deemed illegal for the public good by a reference to free speech or expression.

It's a tough spot, because those people are citizens with interests who have an expectation that those interests will be serviced by their governments. They will never stop trying to write gods law on earth or cast gods vote in an election - because they believe that it's the right thing to do. I'm discarding stochastic terrorists and stable paramilitary movements not because they aren't an issue inextricably tied to this - but because the kingdom of god doesn't actually need those agents or those actions to prevail, and even to prevail over the interests of a nation and it's people. It's happened before, it's happening now, it will happen again. The good and motivated voters for the kingdom of heaven have caused more harm and misery than the extremists. Are we truly writing them a free pass? I'd say no, and that brings us right back round to the uncomfortable and inevitable. It's uncomfortable because we've been over this ground so many times and it's full of landmines - but we do keep returning to that ground and we do have a justification for it and free speech and free expression are not objections to that justification - they're a part of it.

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-as if on cue

The Justice Department has submitted for White House approval a change to how it enforces Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits recipients of federal funding from discriminating based on race, color or national origin. The regulation covers housing programs, employers, schools, hospitals, and other organizations and programs.

...............

The move is the latest in the Trump administration’s efforts to pare back civil rights protections for minority and other groups. It has curtailed other regulations, reversed affirmative action policies and cut government diversity training. The Justice Department effort also dovetails with a decades-long project in the conservative legal movement to push back on civil rights protections seen as going beyond the law.

The Justice Department quietly submitted the change to the White House Office of Management and Budget on Dec. 21, making it one of former Attorney General William P. Barr’s final acts. It did not make the language available for public review or comment, as is typically required in the federal rule-making process, citing an exception for matters related to agency loans, grants and contracts because the rule covers organizations that receive federal funding.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/05/us/po...ticleShare

Our boy Billy Barr..is a dominionist who never saw civil rights legislation he didn't immediately recognize as an existential threat to his political aims. In this case, discriminatory agents had trouble bellying up to the federal trough - and that needed to be fixed.