Canada

While I don't doubt your stance comes from a history of trauma, policing any kind of identity in this way causes real trauma to others. It causes a pervasive sense of isolation that is antithetical to feeling supported and secure and puts a check on a person's ability to participate in their culture. Your lack of comfort does not mend leveling the playing field of stripping away the comfort of others if it is being expressed peacefully.

Bans also very become a very fuzzy line. Most holidays are based off of religious festivals that are widely participated in by the secular and non-secular alike. Once someone starts making exceptions because a wide number of people like a specific one you start creating an artificial canon where minority cultures are oppressed while a narrative of "dominant culture" is allowed giving certain religious traditions cultural supremacy. For example people inside the Church have been trying to get rid of the multitude of pagan festivals that were rebranded as Christmas for eons. They ended up just rubber stamping it because taking away something beloved doesn't go well. In a modern context you could try and rebrand Christmas to a non-religious holiday... But good luck. It's layers of Christian over Pagan imagery and traditions fused into a gastalt religious melange. Any governing body that has tried to get rid of it before has spectacularly failed and leaving it be would quickly become a symbol to people who come from places with different dominant partially seclarized religious traditions that they remain cultural outsiders who don't have the nessisary concensus to participate in public. It would translate directly into supremacy narratives.

It's healthier for a society by far not to police the range of peaceful human expression and connection. People deserve to see themselves represented and connect with each other without needing to act like undercover spies in hostile territory.

It can be amended of course, but you mentioned bending the laws to accomodate religion. I'm just setting that part straight. The laws (in Canada) aren't bent to allow for religious freedom, they guarantee it.

It's worth considering the material conditions upon which the Charter was created. Religion was prevalent and religious people wanted to be free from being persecuted for their religion. Today irreligious people in Canada are about a third. If we amended the Charter to curb public religious display, it would go against the majority of Canadians. That's undemocratic, and unrepresentative of the reality of the country. If some gov did that, it would likely experience severe backlash and the changes would be reversed to more closely match the material conditions.

I'm also an anti-theist and would love religion to disappear, but I think that cannot occur through repression via law or other means. Rather people of religious cultures have to go through the material evolution secular societies have. The Eastern bloc did a lot of work to repress religion without addressing the material conditions giving its rise. Now irreligious people are still a minority in those countries.

I am anti-theist, and fuck no to banning public displays of anything. It's in the name - public. Public space belongs to everyone. Freedom of expression should not be a privilege restricted to people who can afford to buy or rent a place to exercise it.

If you can prove harm, we can ban the harm. Any and all bans must be tightly focused on restricting only harm and to a greater degree than it inherently restricts freedom. Elsewise, we're just oppressing dissent/diversity and essentially abandoning freedom itself as a core value. And the fact that we're talking about dictating what people can do on or with their own bodies raises the stakes that much higher. Seriously, this is a dangerous path and the hazards far greater than any possible reward.

Tax religion. Remove their privilege. Do not create a new underclass.