I'm so tired of "sincerely held relgious beliefs" that are either counter-factual or clearly disempowering to some segment of the population being tolerated in societal contexts as if they were sacrosanct. As you said, there used to be a time when holy books were used to uphold slavery and segregation. We fairly universally acknowledge now that this was wrong and unacceptable. Time to take it the rest of the way. There really are pretty much no religions that treat women equal to men, and that's a big problem. Good piece!