In my response, I will argue that there would not be difficulty to rule out claim for respect of conscience that leads one to harm others and interference from government would be necessary in situation where people are driven to act by such kind of conscience.
Simply speaking, in Kukathusian sense, the liberty of conscience is so important that it should be protected against all possible intervene and violation. To protect individual liberty of conscience, the first thing to deny should be the violation from other individuals. Hence, we have reason to affirm that individual have the right to fight against any violation committed upon his liberty of conscience. Therefore, when you refer to the ritual killing, individuals threatened by it have the right to fight against commitments of ritual killing. I think we have no reason to deny this point and could not regard such kind of action as illegitimate action violating these ritual killers' liberty of conscience. In this sense, the respect for liberty of conscience and the right to protect it for oneself seem to be the contents of natural law. The legitimacy of an action could merely be justified by the fact that it originates from free conscience itself and the illegitimacy of an action is only determined according to the fact that it violates other's liberty of conscience. Here there seems to be a aporia. But it is not. Just like the way Kant defend autonomy of human being and the legitimacy of law that originates from the self determination, here we have reason to say that it is reasonable that liberty of conscience should and only should be constrained by itself. Therefore, an action should be intervened legitimately even if it is driven by one's own free conscience when it is violating other's liberty of conscience.
In the former paragraph, I argued that it is legitimate for one to intervene another's action when it is threatening to him or herself. The following question is whether it is reasonable to extend the intervene to the power of government. As Charlene cited, "[the goal of public policy] is not to shape the culture of the polity, or to uphold the dignity of the individual, or to rescue minority groups from their marginalized status in society. The liberal state is indifferent to these matters. Its only concern is to preserve the order within which such groups and individuals exist." (p. 250) why is it necessary for government to preserve the order? To preserve the order, in Kukathusian sense, is to protect individual's liberty of conscience. This is the reason why government exists. If there is no violation against liberty of conscience in society, the existence of government would not be necessary, in Kukathusian sense. No government is the ideal of minimal state. However, no intervene against liberty of conscience is impossible, so the existence of government is necessary, but the power should be limited as much as it should be. The basic goal for government is to protect people's liberty of conscience. The way to do this is to intervene any violation against liberty of conscience. The case of ritual killing is obviously in the list that government could legitimately intervene. It is based on the same basis with the individual intervene.
This is a defense for Kukathus based on his premise. But this does not mean I accept his basic standpoint. Moreover, for my limited knowledge about Kukathus' theory and the lack of your complete argument, I am not sure if my comments is proper for you argument. But the only thing I expect is that they could be useful for you to further your argument.
Feedback to Jacob
On this issue, here are just some questions, no comment I can offer.
May I understand the three criteria of model-saving you gave are reasons that an scientist should offer to stick to her current model when she meet contrary evidence? If so, then what I want to ask is whether it is also a kind of model-saving to modify some parts of her model to endorse the contrary evidence that is for the unmodified model? In many case, we can ignore contrary evidence when it scarifies one or more of the three criteria, but when it does not, could we still consider such kind of modification mentioned above as the model-saving? If so, is it acceptable to add one criteria as follows: model-saving is heuristically proper if the contrary deviance could be embodied by the model through making some modifications of the model settings?
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