The enemy of my enemy ..........

How easy it is to make assumptions about people. At a gathering I was at recently someone was roundly condemning the Pope and pointing out that although he was selling himself as a part of the "progressive" wing of the church he was in fact a nasty old fascist like his predecessors and had colluded in the crushing of the liberation theology movement by Argentina's military junta. I nodded vigorously in agreement. Clearly I was in good company. We were all secular progressives together. Perhaps even anarcho-atheists. A few moments later someone else asked my new friend if she had attended a particular birthday party. "No", she replied, "I never celebrate birthdays". Alarm bells started to ring inside my head. "In fact I don't celebrate Christmas or Easter or any of the pagan festivals". The alarm bells in what passes for my brain had given way to little people clattering down steel ladders as klaxons blared. "I'm a Jehovah's Witness". Praise the Lord we hadn't exchanged addresses!