Blood Deaths: Watchtower Claims It’s a Myth

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The Watchtower Society wants you to believe that reports of Jehovah’s Witnesses needlessly dying each year because they refuse blood transfusions are mythical and based on mostly unsupportable tales promoted by disgruntled and “mentally diseased apostates.”

That is their claim. “Move along. Nothing to see here. It’s just apostate propaganda. We have everything under control…”

Based only on the number of TV and newspaper reports each year involving the deaths of Jehovah’s Witnesses and their children, the facts are clear that hundreds of Jehovah’s Witnesses or their family members may die or suffer debilitating complications every year for refusing (as required by Watchtower directives) to allow medical professionals to give them necessary blood transfusions.

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Changing the Watchtower: A Hopeless Task?

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When reading various ex-Jehovah’s Witness forums you will often see comments like “I want to see the Tower come crumbling down” – referring to the religious publishing giant the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society.

While its destruction may be a dream for many who have been severely damaged by the Watchtower’s policies, is it practical and useful for us to invest our energies in that task? Instead, wouldn’t it be more useful to use those energies to effect changes that will prevent others from being damaged? Or better yet, try to prevent others from ever joining the ranks of the Witnesses?

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Jehovah’s Witnesses Can Destroy Your Family

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15-year old Canadian

JWSurvey.org recently published a news story titled “Canadian ‘Brainwashed’ Runaway Teenager Chooses Religion Over Mother.” (Read it here.) While that recent news report upset me, it is an unfortunate story that has been repeated many times before. In fact, it is also my story – although mine has a happy ending.

I first came in contact with Jehovah’s Witnesses was when I was ten years old. They offered to start a Bible study with me, but I was too young and my Italian Catholic parents were dead set against the idea.

Fast forward nine years…

The Jehovah’s Witnesses were back at my door – but this time I was no longer a child but a young adult. The conversation seemed to pick up from where it had left off all those years before and once again they offered me a free Bible study. This time I accepted, along with my younger sister. Little did we know (or even suspect) where it would lead us.

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Love & Sex: What I’ve Learned Since Leaving Watchtower

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Growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness (JW) can warp and twist a young person’s mind about many activities, sex in particular. At least that’s how it was for me.

Sitting in the Kingdom Hall as a young child, I would hear talks about sex, but they were, for the most part, warnings about what not to do—what was moral and what was not— but mostly not. Masturbation was wrong, mutual masturbation was wrong, and both oral and anal sex were wrong. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

I would think: Okay, those things are wrong, but I don’t even know what those wrong things are. So I promised myself that as soon I found out what the heck they were, I would never do them.

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Starting 2014 with a Bang!

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Things have been very busy here at AAWA Technical Headquarters since mid-December. We’ve all been trying desperately to keep up with AAWA projects, our own websites and personal activities, and still find some time to enjoy the holidays with our families. It’s too bad that there are not 48 hours in a day, but then we’d all be so tired we’d sleep half of it away from sheer exhaustion.

AAWAke! for January

Our Newsletter team released the January 2014 issue of AAWAke! just prior to the New Year. It’s been available here at AAWA.co since New Year’s Eve, but due to my emergency backlog of other projects, I had to push the actual announcement out just a bit. Please accept my apologies.

This newsletter is another great issue. Steph Le Gardener penned the introductory article about current and planned projects by the Writing and Newsletter teams. She’s urging any of our readers who would like to volunteer to please do so – as we have projects coming up that will need a range of skills and mental energy.

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AAWA Wishes You a Happy 2014

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We were barely into the new year of 2013 when a small group of people started to talk about a new way of dealing with the Watchtower Society. Who would have imagined what would develop from those early discussions that took place just a few months ago?

In past years most people who walked away from the Watchtower Society knew they would likely lose their families and friends. They realized that the best they could hope for was to attempt to find ways to help free their family members. Leaving was a painful choice they would eventually have to make on their own because there were no groups they could go to for support or guidance.

During the nearly twenty years that I have been out of the Witnesses, many people have asked me about the possibility of taking collective action against the Society. Until now that has never really happened. I think most believed that succeeding with that approach was far too great a challenge. Instead, a few did what they could on an individual basis. Others tried (and some continue) to do their part in exposing the Watchtower’s lies, deceit, and manipulations.

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Equal Rights for All: Not for Jehovah’s Witnesses?

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As a follow-up to our earlier article “Exposing the Watchtower’s Flawed Domestic Violence Policy,” I would recommend that you also read “How Do Jehovah’s Witnesses View Women and Domestic Violence?” by the Michigan Skeptics Association. You can read this well-written article by following this link.

In most countries of our modern world “equal rights” for both men and women are considered a societal norm – except for those lands that are predominantly Muslim. Most of us would find it incomprehensible that anyone with a shred of critical thinking skills could believe that God actually has a “pecking order” for human beings based on their gender. Nor would most people believe that deferring to such an archaic and chauvinistic mentality would be the only way we could please God, receive his blessings, and maybe eventually earn everlasting life.

Unless you are one of Jehovah’s Witnesses…

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Exposing the Watchtower’s Flawed Domestic Violence Policy

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You may find it difficult to imagine that in these modern times that anyone could believe that a wife, “a lowly woman,” should be subservient to an abusive husband. Not only that, but should he decide to do her bodily harm, would any reasonable person suggest that she should “shine God’s love on him” by humbly taking whatever he dishes out – and do it without complaint? Can you imagine that observers would justify his actions by suggesting “it was likely her fault because she probably did something to provoke his anger…”?

Anyone with critical thinking skills would find that notion to be totally absurd – especially now that we are well into the 21st Century. Unfortunately, the reality is that this is precisely what the Watchtower Society admonishes over 7 million Jehovah’s Witnesses to do in these situations.

No one has articulated the absurdity of that notion better than Mickey Hudson. Using her pseudonym “Danmera,” Mickey created a classic YouTube video that capsizes any thoughts that this horrendous Watchtower policy has the best interests of its members in mind, or that justification for such abuse would be supported by any reasonable secular or religious standards.

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