SAID IT BEFORE and I'll say it now, the religious pluralism that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said he believed was preferred by God is something I believe is likely true. It is one of those things that my more mature reading of the Jewish Scriptures sees right there unnoticed in plain sight, God is presented as having made covenants with other Peoples who weren't part of the Children of Israel, God is presented as caring about those People and their moral lives, the Children of Israel are commanded to treat foreigners among them as equals even as God commands the same Children of Israel to follow the their own religious and moral path which includes that pluralistic moral egalitarianism. And what was taught in the First Testament is expanded by Jesus into the second testament such as in the parable of the Good Samaritan holding and on to the ultimate of of loving even those who are our enemies and praying for them and not discriminating against them and violently repelling them.
But in life, human life and culture and politics and secular law that radical ideal will have to have limits. Ideologies that glorify in the opposite of those, in discrimination against, enslavement of and murder of other groups identified as "others" by a favored group will create intolerable conditions and human beings will not be able to live with that, ultimately.
Hitler voiced his admiration of the Spartans who violently and murderously enslaved large numbers of Helots and imagined his Aryan Reich doing what they did on a far larger scale. The American white supremacists would do the same here if they could get the power to do that and our Constitutional system is under active manipulation by the Republican Party to give them that upper hand. When I say "American white supremacists" you can substitute the actual entity that is bringing that about, the billionaire and millionaire oligarchs and other gangsters who are behind the empowerment of the overt fascists, racism and other forms of identity hatred is merely one of their most important means of doing that, the corruptibility of lawyers, judges, "justices" and politicians almost as potent but working on fewer numbers.
I think there has to be a distinction made in this, that those religions and ideologies that accept pluralism and egalitarian democracy can be accepted as working equals in the shared civic life of People of good will. Along with that is the moral responsibility of both identifying and rejecting those religious denominations and ideologies that refuse and reject pluralism and egalitarian democracy. AND THOSE IMPOSSIBLE TO GET ALONG WITH IDEOLOGIES ARE DISTRIBUTED ACROSS THE BOARD. The sects and denominations within Christianity that reject the equality of the sexes, races, other religious believers, and LGBTQ people are not worthy of inclusion within what is acceptable or, ultimately, tolerable in a society that seeks egalitarian democracy and the rule of good will.
Even the groups and cults within different denominations include those who do accept that list of requirements for an equally distributed decent life and those who reject it. Catholicism right now clearly has that self-chosen division into those who side with the line of Vatican II and the billionaire financed "traditional Catholics" who reject egalitarianism and pluralism and equal rights. It is the difference between the Catholicism of Justice Sonia Sotomayor and the Catholicism of Amy Coney Barret and Brett Kavanaugh. That it is dramatically obvious in their legal decisions on the Supreme Court that their religious orientation within Catholicism is very much in line with their legal decisions proves that this is, in fact, an extremely important matter in every practical way. In one case, that of Justice Sotomayor, she favors egalitarian democracy and pluralism, in the case of the two "justices" they favor Republican-fascism, the rule of money owned by billionaire and millionaire gangsters, the ability of states to practice American style apartheid, the subjugation of women, in time they will roll back the protections of marriage equality and other hard fought reforms of the 20th and even 19th century and the destruction of the environment for profit. They will, very soon, on a partisan basis, reject the ability of President Biden and Democratic governors to issue effective rules to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
There is a difference between loving your enemies and praying for them and tolerating their empowerment to oppress, enslave, murder and set up a regime of Nazi or Soviet or American supported strong-man rule so as to bring about an era of grinding oppressive evil. There is a difference between living with the differences that lead to different sects and denominations and even more basic religious differences on a basis of good will and mutual respect and living with sects, denominations and, perhaps, even larger divisions of religious identity which reject the bases of good will and mutual respect and living together in difference but in love and good will. I don't think, as the stupid secular law would have it that we must make believe those differences are not obvious and must be allowed because judges and "justices" are either not trustworthy or honest enough to hold their jobs making such distinctions or because they want to pretend they are that stupid because they don't want the stupid and sleazy ones on a higher court to embarrass them by overruling their decisions. And that is just how stupid our legal system is right now, pretending that con men and hucksters and liars those harnessing religiously gullible into political power and wealth are the same thing as the living saints among us. I certainly wouldn't favor the violent oppression of the enemies of the common good but even more so I reject their empowerment on the basis of the inadequate language of the First Amendment - perhaps as dangerous as the inadequate language of the Second one.
It is by their own choices that the enemies of good will, of equality, of a common, decent life for all remove themselves from the moral and rational tolerance for difference that should have an equal footing under law just as an alcoholic with a bad driving record removes themselves from those who should have a license to drive and the legal right to own a car.
I will add as another practical example that under the Republican-fascist legal and political madness that we face right now, supported by ideologues and religious cultists, the sanity of depriving the dangerously mentally ill from having and carrying assault weapons is another kind of "equality" that is not only insanely irresponsible, no matter how the "justices" allowing it will come up with written "reasoning" to do the unreasonable, it's getting lots of us killed and that cannot go on forever, unstopped. Moral pluralism cannot extend that far, not even when they call it religion advocated by millionaire hallelujah peddlers.
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