Room for all God's miscreants

The new Supreme Court has significantly expanded the rights of religions over the good of all citizens. For this court, the First Amendment "free exercise" clause includes just about anything a religious group chooses to do, no matter how detrimental that might be to the common good. Want to have hundreds at a wedding during a deadly pandemic? Now religious groups have the right to be super spreaders of COVID 19.

That is probably good news for the 40,000 fundamentalist Mormons whose practices of polygamy may now be protected. Other religions groups also have reason to be spiritually joyous. Take the Catholic Church, where the sexual abuse of children has become so commonplace that it is almost part of the religious experience. Thousands of priests have abused children for decades, and their actions have been protected right up to the Vatican. Why couldn't the church now claim that pedophilia is a part of its religious tradition, and as such is protected from criminal prosecution?

Zionists have reasons to celebrate as well. Israel is an important part of the Jewish and Evangelical Christian religions, so wouldn't the apartheid treatment of five million Palestinian now be protected by the Supreme Court? In fact shooting Palestinians, bulldozing their homes and walling them into fetid ghettos has been part of both religions for over a century. Why not celebrate it, along with bigamist Mormons and child molesting Catholics? The new religious freedoms enshrined by the Supreme Court have room for all God's miscreants.