This is one of the most ironic religious news items I’ve seen in a while. According to an SF Gate article reproduced here, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, Inc., the corporation that oversees the Jehovah’s Witness religious group is suing a website which features quotations from old WatchTower pamphlets.

The Canadian website: www.quotes.watchtower.ca is operated by a former Jehovah’s Witness. The website’s content consists of “quotations” from WatchTower publications which have previously been widely distributed to the general public, but are now out-of-print.

The WatchTower’s lawsuit alleges that such “quotations” from its own literature are “embarrassing” and have caused Jehovah’s Witnesses loss of “reputation” and “goodwill”.

Ironically, Jehovah’s Witnesses are best known for their lack of “goodwill” among the general public due to their “reputation” for doing anything and everything to get non-JWs to read their literature.

The WatchTower conglomerate is the largest religious publisher in the world, and all Jehovah’s Witnesses members are required to engage in public distribution of literature.

This Quotes.Watchtower site is actually really awesome. They have lots of different sections organized by keywords around stated beliefs going back at least to the 1930’s.

1. Here’s a fun page of quotes from 1934 stating their sympathy for the Nazi government and their dislike for Jews.
2. A page of those awesome illustrations of people being killed by God’s loving grace
3. Another page as recent as 1964 instructing women that if they are raped and they don’t scream or try to flee, then they are consenting to it. Admittedly, they’re only trying to follow Old Testament legal codes, but come on - “A Christian woman is entitled to fight for her virginity or marital fidelity to the death.”
4. Quotes from the 1970’s indicating that past evidence of child molestation is no reason to remove an elder from a leadership role. Meanwhile, they badmouth Catholic priests acting under the same principle.

Ah, good times. And a great website. I certainly hope that the Watch Tower Society loses this completely bullshit legal case of suing people for quoting from material they are always trying to force-feed to people.