I agree that no one can be forced to communicate or associate with anyone else, and I agree that publicly announcing that so-and-so has effectively chosen to no longer be one of Jehovah’s Witnesses is simply and rightly stating a fact; HOWEVER, the problem is that the Watch Tower corporation has deliberately and consistently published in its enormous collection of literature the very clear and binding directives to all its membership that they absolutely must shun any who lose their standing within the organization (or else!) – regardless of any close family ties, and regardless of the very real and profound psychological and emotional damages this inevitably causes.
So, although the secular law cannot mandate fellowship among members of any group, I think that the government should carefully investigate the practices of blatant coercion within religious groups, especially considering the tax-free status demanded by such groups and the very real damages suffered by many people in the community.
Whether or not the government can, or should, enact legislation to directly adjudicate specific cases of damages suffered from a religious group’s harmful policies, the thing which is perhaps most important is the public reporting on such harmful policies and their effects on real people in the community through the media. No doubt just one minute of coverage in the general media exposing the destructive tactics of these disingenuous religious outfits would probably be of greater worth than all the petitions we can muster. That gets them where it hurts the most: their public reputation. And such negative public exposure is the worst enemy of an outfit like Jehovah’s Witnesses – because it has the greatest power to cost them dearly in the very thing they need: the numbers of new members!