No General Religious Right

I don't think there is a general religious right, that adds to the general set of rights. There is a right to be religious, that is to follow your religion, but not a right that covers all others. This perhaps subtle difference manifests itself in no particular right to wear a symbol of a religion, if that was to be dangerous or unhealthy or contradict a principle of revealing an identity (at certain fixed points), but then beyond these people should be free to pursue religion including religious dress. So there is an unresolved issue about Sikhs and carrying a knife and not wearing helmets on motorcycles. We have granted rights there that perhaps should not have been granted: the religion might have, for example, produced non-sharp knives to carry and designs on to helmets that suggest head coverings.

There should be no blasphemy law nor even a law demanding respect: respect is something we give freely, not told, and we cannot restrict the critic and comic. Institutional religion should set itself up freely, and people can freely restrict themselves if they want, but it cannot tell others what to do beyond the social consensus. It seems to me that the social demand to have 'marriage' as an all-encompassing legal term for the joining of two people into a strong partnership should not be undermined by special religious pleading, and whilst no religion should be forced to carry out the ceremony (and therefore this means an end to religious establishment) nor should the State nor religious groups be prevented from carrying out a straightforwardly equally applied ceremony that recognises the freely-entered strong bond (if religions have that direct function).

Nothing prevents religion from arguing its case into the public space, but law emerges through principles established both through struggle and consensus, and the general principle for law is that of liberty and equality together, each facilitating the other. Where religion denies this combination, religion should be private and for private consent into any particularl community. Such community has no collective rights over an individual, who is always free to leave such communities - but the only community one cannot leave is that of the State, and this is why liberty and equality are so fundamental.