A previous thread http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/200592/2/Joel-P-Engardios-article-on-JWs-Washington-Post has covered an earlier story Joel Engardio wrote on gays and Witnesses.
In the Washington Post (Nov 7, 2010) he writes again of how his JW mother grieved for him "as if I had died" when she learned he was gay. Engardio notes:
"Among Jehovah's Witnesses there is no easy exit for the adolescent who skillfully parrots theology at age 10 or 12 and decides in his late teens or early twenties that the religion isn't for him. Anyone who officially joins through baptism is subject to shunning if they don't follow the agreed upon rules.
"I was never baptized and it saved my relationship with my mom. Gay kids who got baptized before they could come to terms with their sexuality are not so fortunate. In the most extreme cases, parents cut all contact with their shunned adult children.
"...I wonder if parents with religious objections to homosexuality have fully considered the consequences of insisting their gay child follow a faith that works for them but not their child. Can the religious parents who lost a gay child to suicide or shunning ever find peace with the outcome? Or would they rather have a relationship with their child, alive, separate from their religion?
It's a shame that Engardio, whose "Knocking" doco was embraced by Witnesses as a glowing endorsement of their religion, didn't address the issue of shunning by families in his piece.
The lesson in Engardio's tale is a powerful one: kids are pushed into baptism at an early age, long before they are mature enough to know how they will feel in adulthood. But once baptised, they are trapped in a religion that refuses to allow anyone to escape without being eternally damned, their families forced by a cold, calculating religious doctrine to refuse to speak to them again, treating them as if they are dead.