Td, thats where i have to break with you. Jw’s dont “forbid” anything, nor do they have the authority to forbid. They have no power their membership dosent willingly grant. Your free to leave anytime. Your family and friends dont have shun you, its a choice they make. I realize this is an unpopular opinion but we all have choices even if those choices are influenced by a high control religious group.
Morpheus I believe I disagree with you about the circumstances some of us find ourselves in when it comes to high control religious groups but I do not disagree with you when it comes to personal responsibility and choice.
I was a born-in, the indoctrination was imposed on me. It took me more than two decades growing up in the religion to see it was a load of bollocks. Then, I had to decide upon leaving how to survive when my entire social network was made up of JWs. Surviving hasn't been easy.
My point is I didn't stand a chance. Years and years of my life and a lot of energy were simply just wasted. I also failed to invest in my education at an earlier time thanks in part to those godawful belief systems. Had I been born in a mainstream religion in a family that was not made up of zealots I would have had better odds to be freer. The Catholic Church today is less detrimental to freedom in the West than Islam is, even though it can hardly be argued that it does more good than harm.
Having said that I believe Thomas Jefferson had it right when he famously wrote that the government "should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."
Though some of us didn't have a choice banning a cult is not a long-term solution. More freedom is necessary, not less. A free press that would report the truth about any religion without any bias, an uncensored Internet that would allow for dissent from all sides on any issues, and a government not meddling with individual freedoms.
At the end of the day, people need financial freedom to survive. They also need to take full responsibility for themselves if they are going to survive in the real world after leaving a cult if they were born in it. Governments should spend more time fixing their education systems and their economies than banning religions, so their citizens can be truly educated, have access to jobs, and are then able to make a positive contribution to society. If a JW leaving the cult can get the access to education that they need and can support themselves financially even after losing all his family and his entire social network, leaving becomes easier. I am not even mentioning the psychological support needed to leave as well.
Those are my feelings, yet I can't help feeling a tingle of schadenfreude hearing that the Watchtower was banned by the Russian government.