Its something to unite against, and its the business model. At least in part. I had a roommate who's parents were NOT into D&D resulting in some conversations

Its something to unite against, and its the business model. At least in part. I had a roommate who's parents were NOT into D&D resulting in some conversations on this topic. We'll all unite against it, regardless if it exists or is even a problem. Its been the bane of minorities for centuries, although it works pretty well. So you get 100 teens in church holding up their hand or praying or whatever they did to promise, well, it doesn't matter, the point is they got them unified. From memory his mom worked the unity angle, what matters is every teen in the congregation made the same pledge. To some folks unity and conformity is more important than the rights of minorities. "well, maybe its not fair and maybe they're good people at heart, but what really matters is they're them and we're us". Again from memory, his Dad was freaked out by the business model. So wait... you're saying that its possible for a very small number of people to sit around and write a completely fictional work of vast size that is creative and interesting mythology and publish numerous books about it and it becomes crazy popular and culturally influential? You're not, uh, implying anything about the development process of a certain book we consider holy from 2000+ years ago, are you? So this annoys the parents twofold, first of all its highly unfavorable direct analogy with their favorite business model aka religion, and secondly no one likes weasel words and if you're trying to say holy books are works of fiction then just spit it out don't talk around it. To those parents it sounds a lot like "I'm not coveting my neighbor's wife, I just want a one night stand with her, so technically I'm off the hook WRT sin and commandments, right, I mean the words don't literally match up so its OK, right?"