"Overall, we are in danger of allowing government officers to force their particular stance on certain matters on us all and I cannot accept that that does good for anybody."

But that's what religion can do. As I mentioned earlier, the Dutch Reformed Church was the bastion of the apartheid system in South Africa - they stated that god had given the white man dominion over the black man and that to oppose that was to go against god. This is still the view held by the white supremacists in South Africa. So, should these people be given the freedom to practice what they believe?