Just a reminder that she didn’t actually explain why she was tearing up a picture of the Pope, she just pulled out a picture of him and tore it up without context. Nobody understood wtf was happening.
The remake being attached to Trek with the creator being annoyed at VOY and leaving to make his own show still kinda fits the Mormon thing with the above chart, though.
Ro was basically on probation in her first appearance or two, IIRC. Uniform modifications are allowed at the discretion of the officer’s CO, and Ro was already in something of a disciplinary thing, so forbidding modifications makes some sense.
While the earring is typically religious and she may have been able to argue for reasonable accomodation on those grounds, Ro specifically wears it on the left ear, which is considered a secular way to show familial heritage while also indicating you don’t follow the Bajoran faith.
The way his conviction wavers as he says it also shows that he’s trying to convince himself and justify his actions to himself more than anything else. It’s not that he can live with it, it’s that he has to live with it.