"The fact that members of the family had decided that those people were enough like us to draw them into the family circle did not induce them to change their mental labels". How true that can be. There was, to say the least, some hassle when my parents (one a Catholic, one a Protestant) decided to get married in N. Ireland in the early 1970s. You would think that nearly 30 years later such attitudes would have diminished. Not so. One of my uncles does not approve at all that a cousin of mine is dating a Protestant. I find it bizarre. Ludicrous. I encountered a similar problem myself when I didn't fit the religious requirements imposed by a boyfriend's mother. She made it quite clear she didn't like me, and for a while I actually cared. Now I'm well away from her and her son ;-)