Perhaps, but it's not as indefensible as you suggest. As the author notes:

Beliefs shape attitudes and motives, guide choices and actions.

It seems to me that what you're doing is drawing a distinction between believing and acting on belief. On the other hand, the author's point (which I agree with) is that this is not actually a realistic distinction.

Take vaccine denialism. Refusing to vaccinate your kids has negative effects on people: the kids who may end up dying from something preventable, as well as all their peers whose own immunity is lessened. Now, you can say that someone has a right to believe that vaccines are harmful despite all evidence to the contrary. But then we're left with a conundrum: do we allow people to have those beliefs but not to express them? Or do we just suck it up and accept the fact that one of us may lose a child because of someone else's belief?

The latter seems to be what we've defaulted to. But for this to be defensible, someone's going to have to demonstrate to me why the right to have a belief that is inconsistent with reality is more important than someone else's right to continue living.