Freedom of religion and Texas republicans

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." - H.L. Mencken

The Houston outpost of a national anti-scientology group has convinced the Texas republican party to support stripping scientology of its tax-exemption, effectively declaring it a non-religion.

I am no defender of scientology, but that is in some sense precisely the point. In a free society, being a mature adult, or perhaps just being an adult, means accepting that other people will believe things that seem to you deeply stupid, evil or misguided. There are two productive ways to deal with such people: one is to simply ignore them and go on with your life. In most cases, what they believe is problematic enough that few will be attracted to it. The alternative is to engage the beliefs intellectually. Simply outlawing the beliefs, or in this case attempting to tax them, is the lazy person's alternative to the second choice.

Houston Anonymous should stop trying to advance their views through the state power and should instead stick to the marketplace of ideas. Otherwise one might infer that they prefer the state to the marketplace because they think they would lose out in the marketplace.