I said this before on the previous forum, but I'm saying it here because it bears repeating: people who paint an entire group with the same damned brush irritate the fuck outta me. Saying that all Witnesses are creepy cultists is, to me, no different than saying that all Mexicans are illegals, or all black folks are thieves.
The Witness thing, in particular, bugs the FUCK outta me because -one,- we give other religions leeway, admit that not all members of a religion are fundamentalist dickwads, but the Witnesses seem to -always- get shit on and painted with a brush broad enough to paint the whole of Texas with one stroke. Two, my mother's a Witness. You paint them all with that brush, you're painting her with that brush, and I do NOT take kindly to that. My mother is a kind, caring, hard-working woman who, despite knowing for a fact that I'm an atheist, has helped me to such an extent that I can never fully repay her for it all. She has never shunned me, or treated me as anything other than her son, like a mother ought to.
Yeah, some of the shit she does irritates me, but she is a good woman, and I can't stand assholes who try to make her, by way of making blanket remarks about all those of her denomination, out to be some kind of mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, prehistoric troglodyte who'd disown her own son because he dared be different. No, just fucking NO. You get pissed off when people say that all atheists are presumptuous, arrogant dickheads with god complexes, so don't do the same thing to others, lest you be a hypocrite of the most disgusting sort.