You name it - other beliefs and interests won't give people special protection or special consideration from authorities.
An inability to see how religion differs from, say, stamp collecting, is a huge stumbling block in this sort of argument.
I think it's pretty easy to see how for some people religion is the basis of their worldview--to the point that everything revolves around it. That's a given. The question is not how to squash that worldview into something palatable for the rest of us, but rather to look for some point of intersection. A place where compromises can be made. You're not going to get very far in convincing someone, if you're yelling at them that they're unreasonable and deluded and/or forcing them to conform to another worldview.
One does better then, making *some* concessions to religion (say conceding its privileged role in someone's life) in this case, rather than to try to dismiss it.
I say this in response to the UN thing. It strikes me that this is a concession to free up some space for dialogue (protecting it via "respect"). We're certainly not getting very far waving free speech as a right to dismiss other religions. The harder we cling to our right to say a religion is backwards and primitive (from our oh-so-enlightened point of view), the harder the followers will cling to it, percieving it as an attack on *them*. This sort of thing leads to a standstill.
Given this, I can understand where "respect religion" thing came from, even if it is shocking from a secular standpoint (and that shock is yet another the problem to deal with, since we're supposed to attempt to climb OUT of ourselves).
Will the "respect religion" thing work out? I honestly don't know. I should hope that the UN uses the utmost care in protecting human rights and decrying abuses, which should be first and foremost. However, the UN is hardly infallible.
alcyone
