Why do I believe Freedom of Religion is necessary for a free and Democratic people?

 When you make any religion the state religion whether that be Catholic or Muslim or Hindu or whatever, you relegate any one who believes something else to the scrap heap in that they cannot worship publicly who they want to worship. Some of the worst examples of this is what is happening to Tibetans and the  Uyghurs in China. Tibetans have traditionally worshipped Tibetan Buddhism which is a form of Buddhism mixed with the Shamanism of Bonpo which would be similar to a native American Shamanism only in the Himalayas. The head of this religion is the Dalai Lama. He escaped with some of the leaders of his church to India where they gave him Dharamshala as a place for the Tibetan Government in Exile. However, Tibetan Buddhists in Tibet and China have been persecuted ongoing since around 1950 which began when the Chinese first invaded Tibet then. The Dalai Lama escaped in the late 1950s from the Chinese in Tibet.

And the Uyghurs are Muslims in China but being a Uyghur is now made illegal by the Chinese government. In some ways the way the Tibetans and the Uyghurs are being treated by the Chinese reminds me some of how Americans Treated Native Americans and forced the separation of Native Americans from their religions and sent the children to Christian schools where many died from confusion and missing their parents until the 1960s or 1970s.

But, what the U.S. did to Native Americans was NOT Freedom of Religion. Until the 1960s and 1970s Freedom of religion mostly meant that you had the freedom to be some sort of Christian here in the U.S. basically, (even though it's true there were also Hindus and Muslims and Jewish people practicing their religions here openly and to some degree most people left them alone to worship as their traditions demanded of them.

So, Finally now the U.S. actually has more of a real Freedom of Religion going on than it did say in the 1950s for example.

So, what is the advantage of Freedom of Religion? Sanity.

I think if you are forced to act like you believe in something that you don't it makes people start to go mad and crazy and makes them dysfunctional. If you are dysfunctional it affects all aspects of your life and you might become suicidal as a direct result just like many Native American Children who killed themselves when separated from their families and put into Christian Schools and couldn't see their parents again.

So, I would say that Freedom of Religion is about sanity within Families a lot. This is true even though some people when they grow up leave and don't believe the same religion as their parents anymore.

It's about sanity to have Freedom of religion which can prevent suicide of one or many. This is what I would say the advantage to Freedom of religion actually is.