I agree we should respect secular ethical choices with the same protections as religious ones, but this is currently an aspirational goal in the US. For now to get acceptance and strong legal protection of ethical choices we sort of have to wrap them in a religious shroud since that is the framework the state has to deal with protecting such choices. The issue with this is that your choices might not align perfectly with the options you have and people will say it’s not a real religion if you are the only practitioner. Maybe a workaround would be to take a dead christian denomination and use that? Other religions wouldn’t get easy acceptance here.