A society in general relies on the criminal records of the people, but does not put certainty in what someone says he "believes" in. What you say you believe is not worth anything, if it is not attached to a record where you can check past facts (your number of criminal offenses). People who are familiar and know one another do not need to see such record, they know it by witnessing their daily lives.
Modern societies, in particular in the West, turned their rules upside down, and did and further do want to make the former exceptions the rules.
Right now, hypocrisy has grown to a frightening extend. And we are in the middle of people and politicians who pretend to be harmless, while at the same time seem to push towards a license to kill - change pro life laws into anti-life laws.
Not only, it seems, do they not want to see and admit that what they really are after, is rule no. 2, but also want it not to be named and seen as a wish to kill/harm without consequences. They wrap it into terms like "protect self actualisation". This is even more dishonest than those extremists who openly shout "Kill the unbelievers!" These former types of seemingly insane minds don't want to be seen as killers/harmers but as saviors and protectors. And they want force you to admit that they are.
We, the people who see us in the midst of those two insanities have the least criminal records, so you cannot punish us since our records are clean. We see that by eliminating free speech and make it a crime to speak out, that our clean records won't be clean anymore.
Also, from the other side we are being killed by ever higher numbers from extremists who shoot, stab, rape and kill us, who set our houses on fire, but are not being arrested and punished in equal terms, since the ones who are anti life, seem to be concentrated to criminalize their own people, while being blind to extremists, oddly enough.