Why this matters

On my blood pledge thread against Jehovah’s Witness dogma someone has suggested that I am doing it in spite and it is about me not the issue. In case anyone else thinks those are my motives I show below my response to that charge. 

If it is about me, it is about a ten year old boy so committed to Jehovah that he could quote scripture looking at adults straight in the eye and say he was prepared to die for this belief. A ten year old that would later discover what a fraud the Jehovah’s Witness movement has been in its history when reading the original publications.

And yes as an adult there is something to be said for breaking a taboo that has no bad consequences for my body. I can give blood and it will cost me a minor inconvenience. I will replenish it myself. But to someone else that blood could make all the difference to their life. Now I am not just trying to encourage giving blood. I am about promoting and raising consciousness. 

I am echoing Hitchens remark that religion really does poison everything. The charitable giving of something that could save a life is suddenly taken by a group to be against god’s word – though it never occurred to the Israelites that the blood of humans could be used to save someone’s life, nor to the early christians. If you believe a parent has the right to refuse a blood transfusion for their child knowing in all probability this will result in death then I say with no respect you are lacking in the human instinct to go through hell to keep your children safe, and you deserve as much respect for that opinion as one that thinks suicide bombers have a point when they blow themselves and innocent bystanders up.

The children are innocent bystanders, who may otherwise given the chance to live reach the age when they can make their own choice and leave. All the kids I grew up in that Kingdom Hall did leave – children of Elders and Ministerial Servants. Yet if their parents had made the decision not to give them blood they never would have grown up to make that choice. If you fail to understand that, what my pledge is about, nor what my blog comments on, then all I can say is I do not need you to sign the pledge.

But if you do care about this, and have had your consciousness raised by being more aware of the issue then I hope you will give blood. Thank you.