Howdy,
There are actually two different thoughts being expressed in this thread.
The first one and to answer your question of "whether it is fair to discipline born-into-its" I would say "yes it is fair."
First discipline is going to come into play if their is some "sin" committed. Assuming that it is appropriate to punish for the particular "sin" in the first place, it should make no difference (from a fairness POV) how long a person is a baptized witness or whether they were raised in the Truth, i.e. it is the SIN and the persons supposed lack of repentance that is the factor that is important not their status (supposedly).
But beyond that, consider this. A person who is raised as a Witness is likely to see others Disfellowshipped, to shun them and perhaps even to have someone close to them in this status. Therefore, one could say that in comparison to a new convert, the born-into-its are even more accountable for their sins. In fact one could thus say that it is actually more fair to punish them then it is to punish new converts because of their heightened experience with disfellowshipping.
To put it another way, one big deficiency that I have ALWAYS had a problem with when it comes to Bible Studies is that the person being studied with HAS NO CLUE of the social consequences of DF'ng. In fact, I would wager that in MOST bible studies are never prepared for this potential consequence of membership and it is probably not one of the topics of studies as they progress towards membership. At most, I believe the whole concept of Disfellowshipping is used as selling point of the religion in how JWs are willing to expel wrongdoers. This is meant to be an obvious sign of the true christian organization and promoted as a GOOD THING. Even if conceptually the potential convert (bible study) understands that if they get baptized they can find themselves DF'd in the future, because they haven't had any experience in seeing it happen to someone they care about they have no grasp of the social ramifications.
So if you follow what I am saying, again it would seem MORE FAIR to discipline persons raised as a Witness who SHOULD have a better understanding of what it means to be DF'd and seek to avoid getting in that state with greater vigour than a convert.
The SECOND idea that most have posted in this thread goes to the situation where persons were baptized TOO YOUNG.
I agree that the pressure of early baptism is a reality and a terrible facet of the org. We are talking about lifetime commitment (supposedly) and so in my view we should treat the situation like we would treat any other lifetime commitment (most obviously marriage).
Would we encourage a young person (even someone under 18 years old) to get married?Maybe, but it probably is not a good idea and most reasonable persons would say definitely not! Likewise persons under 18 should not be pressured into getting baptized for all of the same reasons they would not be encouraged to get married at an early age.
The good news is that the youth of this generation are tech-savvy and Web-proficient. That means that despite the current admonitions against the Internet (and future stronger prohibitions which I foresee) on the part of the Org. these younger folks in the future are going to be exposed to the counter-information and what is available on the Net. Thus we can hope that they will be able to make a better informed choice then generations of Witnesses which have preceded them.
--Eduardo
