From a Time Magazine article about the proposed circumcision ban in San Francisco:
The San Francisco debate over circumcision initially centered on the value of the procedure itself — opponents call it barbaric, supporters point to its long tradition and say it prevents disease. But increasingly the debate is becoming one about religion, in which critics accuse backers of the referendum of bigotry and insist a ban would violate the First Amendment’s religious freedoms. […]
Still, the drafters of the San Francisco referendum could have avoided the religious issue — and kept the focus on the harms and benefits of circumcision — if they had included an exception for circumcisions done for religious reasons. Jews, whose religious traditions require male children to be circumcised eight days after birth, and Muslims, who also practice circumcision, are a small part of the city’s population.
Instead, the referendum expressly states that the ban would apply equally to religious circumcisions.
By not including a religious exemption, the writers of San Francisco’s proposed ban guaranteed that what should have been a debate about boy’s rights to an intact body, and about health issues, has become a debate about if they themselves are bigots. That’s neither smart nor effective.1
Circumcision ban advocates might respond that Jewish and Muslim boys deserve to remain intact as much as anyone else. But talking about the proposed ban as if it would actually prevent circumcisions among Jews and Muslims is unrealistic. Determined parents — and after this campaign, Jewish and Muslim parents in San Francisco are, I’d wager, more determined than ever — can drive out of town to have the circumcision done, or have the circumcision done at home (as many Jews already do).
The only thing a circumcision ban could do, other than help start some conversations, is change how parents who don’t feel strongly about circumcision choose. Some parents currently having their sons circumcised, not because they’re determined to do so, but because circumcision is more-or-less the default choice in many US hospitals. Those are the parents who might change what they do because of a ban. But the ban will never pass if it doesn’t include a religious exemption.
- Actually, there’s good reason to think that the folks behind the San Francisco ban are in fact antisemites. But perhaps some future proposed bans will come from people who aren’t dragging around huge “we are bigoted jerks” baggage. [↩]
LOL. Exempting (unnecessary) religious circumcision from circumcision bans? Then what? Exempting religious FGM? Spectacular!
Now seriously: circumsicion should be banned entirely, just as FGM, especially as a religious procedure, because anything that goes against anyone’s bodily autonomy should be dealth away, period! (That’s why I compared FGM with circumsicion on the 1st paragraph).
Amp is right. I think that circumcision should never happen, religious exemptions be damned, because it’s medically unnecessary surgery on a human being unable to give informed consent. Let them have it done when they’re old enough to be emancipated, vote, get tattooed, etc. Let it be a chosen affirmation of membership and belonging in a community, rather than a branding-at-birth.
However, I also don’t think that people should use heroin, and as far as I can tell, that hasn’t stopped anyone either. (No, I’m not drawing a direct analogy between circumcision and drug use, but I have a Cunning Rhetorical Plan. Wait for it.)
Nothing stops all abuse of heroin. But some things reduce it, and some things reduce the collateral effects on other people. Like needle exchange programs. There are those who decry needle exchange programs as enabling heroin users to avoid some consequences of their actions. But mainly, they enable other people to avoid the consequences of the heroin users’ actions.
In other words, they reduce harm. It’s all about harm reduction, especially when it comes to public health issues.
In my ideal world, there is no circumcision except as it is demonstrably, individually medically necessary. Maybe that will happen someday. But until then, I’d be happier with a partial reduction than with no reduction.
Grace
Wouldn’t a religious exemption would be religious discrimination against non-Jewish or Muslim parents who want circumcision of their male children for (whatever) reason?
@ Robert … I don’t really see how it would be religious discrimination if their reason for wanting the circumcision wasn’t religious. Is it religious discrimination against non-Jews to treat Rosh Hoshannah and Yom Kippur as excused absences for Jewish kids in public school? Is there any track-record of courts treating religious exemptions as discrimination against people who don’t follow that religion? (Would be interesting to apply that reasoning to same-sex marriage or abortion conscience clauses.)
Tell me something, Ampersand. How do you know that the cartoon makers are related to the San Francisco ban?
Jose @5, the author of the comic is the president of the organization responsible for the San Francisco bill. Hess has never denied that he is a sponsor of the bill, only that his comic is anti-Semitic.
Jose, first of all, what Mythago and Grace said. (Thanks, Mythago and Grace!)
Secondly, I do think that the decision to ban FGM (which can also be called FGS) or not should be based on harm reduction. In circumstances where an absolute ban on FGS would lead to more harm to girls than some other policy, then I don’t support an absolute ban on FGS. See these past posts on Alas (two of which are by my co-blogger Mandolin, but I entirely agree with what she says): 1 2 3
Thanks, Mythago, I hadn’t read the bill proposer’s website.
And, Ampersand, I do agree that, in some cases, abolition of circumcision and FGM policies should be harm reduction-based (but only after the study of other policies). However, I do think any law that exempts religious circumsicion (or FGM) should be ridiculed, since most circumsicion/FGM is made because of religion/culture, and, so, such laws wouldn’t protect children from those procedures (and their associated evils, which differ).
By the way, about antisemitism and the San Francisco ban, even if the president of the organization is the cartoon’s author (which indeed is), we should be careful when we state the ban was antisemitic, because the author was at least trying to be ironic, and don’t forget there are many Jews against circumsicion (see, for instance: http://www.cirp.org/news/jerusalempost11-21-02/, about Israeli parents who didn’t circumsice their children). (This reminds me: is Hess a jew? If so, he can’t be antisemitic, «only» a self-hating Jew.)
@ Jose … Hess is not Jewish.
What information do you have that the author was “trying to be ironic”, whatever that means? Hess’s statement, when asked if the comic was anti-Semitic, was “A lot of people have said that, but we’re not trying to be anti-Semitic. We’re trying to be pro-human rights.”
Certainly many Jews oppose circumcision. They don’t use anti-Semitic tropes as Hess does.
@ Jose – Religion and culture are not equally situated in the United States in terms of protection. Saying that most circumcisions/FGC is because of “religion/culture” is not addressing the issue. Amp is not talking about a “culture exemption” – he’s talking about a religious exemption. He’s talking about a law that would seek to change the cultural norm by doing away with vague “cultural” circumcisions without banning religious circumcisions. The fact is that in the US, most circumcisions are NOT religious circumcisions. Most circumcisions are routine infant circumcisions because that’s what people expect to do because that’s what their parents did/that’s what doctors assume they will choose/that’s what seems “normal” in this culture. You could presumably prevent a lot of circumcisions by changing that default assumption (with or without a ban, but a ban is probably seen by many proponents as a “fast” way to change the default, especially when it only applies within a city; those who are really motivated to have their son circumcized can get it done somewhere else).
Amp and Grace: You both have good points about not having an outright ban (and entrenching those who might otherwise be more open to discussion.) However, from what I know of conservative Protestant religion (which I was raised in, albeit the Texas version not the San Francisco version,) there would be an uproar if this law were put into effect. It might not be entrenched in religious doctrine for Protestants, but circumcision is pretty tied into the religion without having a direct tenant or ceremony. This type of religious divide I can see becoming very anti-Semitic (“why us and not them” sort of reasoning), which again, would be a bad outcome.
Perhaps I’m mistaken about this and it would all go smoothly. But it is something to think about in the hypothetical situation.
Amp, I often agree with you, but I think you’re completely wrong in this situation. I think that religious exemptions would be unreasonable and illogical in this situation, and I also think that, generally, “religious exemptions” are hooey.
1. You seem to be of the opinion that a dialogue about whether specific religious practices are wrongheaded is a bad thing, or is inherently bigoted. While it is probably true that a wide-ranging discussion of the good and bad things about any religion will involve some bigotry, I think the cultural norm in this country is to attack people who criticize religions. I don’t agree with the idea that more religious criticism is a negative thing.
2. If one argues that routine infant circumcision is wrong because it violates the bodily integrity of a young human being, then it is still wrong if that young human being has Jewish or Muslim parents. One cannot logically support the claim that violating the bodily integrity of an infant is wrong, but we’ll just look the other way if you claim it’s religious.
Previously on this blog, you pointed out that when pro-life groups advocate for abortion bans that contain exemptions for pregnancies that result from rape and incest, they are not being consistent with their stated position that a fetus is a living human being. Here, you engage in something very similar: you’re proposing a law that is not logically consistent with the purpose of the law.
3. In practice, religious exemptions are hooey. The only way that a “religious exemption” can work and be fair is if every person, under the law has an equal right to claim that religious exemption. The religious exemptions, for example, in New York’s same-sex marriage laws, are simply window-dressing. No church has ever been forced to perform a marriage, so including an exemption that prohibits forcing a church to perform gay marriages doesn’t actually change the same-sex marriage law. The law affects everyone the same.
What you are proposing is an exemption where people of certain faiths can claim, “My religion requires me to do this,” and other people can’t. If you are proposing a law where Parent A can legally circumcise their son and Parent B would suffer legal consequences for the same action, then you are proposing a discriminatory law. There is no question about that. On the other hand, if you are proposing a law where any parent in the city can claim, “I choose to do this for religious reasons,” then you aren’t proposing a ban in the first place. All a person has to do to avoid the consequences of the ban is say, “My religion requires it.”
On the (third?) hand, if you envision a law where parents must prove that they are members of particular, approved religions in order to qualify for exemptions, then you’re proposing a law that puts the government in the position of evaluating which religions are real and which religions aren’t. That is absolutely an inappropriate position for the government to be in. The government should have absolutely no say in how observant I choose to be. If I want to pick and choose among religious beliefs, that should absolutely be my right.
In summary, it seems to me that the type of religious exemptions you are proposing would either make the circumcision ban pointless, or have terrible consequences in terms of religious freedoms, or both. I submit that a proposed ban on routine infant circumcision shouldn’t include religious exemptions–and if you think it should, then it makes far more sense to just create a public education campaign about circumcision, because the ban isn’t really a ban.
I was discussing this with a friend, and we came up with another way to frame this.
The purpose of proposing a ban on routine infant circumcision is to create a law that will protect children. The people who are harming children, intentionally or unintentionally, are parents and doctors. A religious exemption means that certain children are singled out by the law as a class that is not protected.
It is unconscionable to propose a law to protect children and then specify certain children who, through no fault of their own, will not be protected by the law because of someone else’s religion.
Phil, did you read this part of my post?
I think the post already addressed the main argument that you’re making, but you completely ignored it.
Amp, that passage talks about the practicality of religious exemptions. It doesn’t deal with my 3ish main arguments, which were, a) an increase in religious criticism isn’t always bad, b) a religious exemption renders your argument illogical, in the same way that “rape and incest” exemptions poke holes in the rhetoric of some pro-lifers, and c) religious exemptions make the entire ban meaningless, because religious exemptions are hooey.
To clarify, part c, let me reiterate that my point is that a religious exemptions are hooey because they either permit every single person in the jurisdiction of the law to exempt themselves from the law, or they represent a grave intrusion of the government into religious freedom, putting the government in the position of determining which religions are “real” and deserve the exemption and which religious beliefs aren’t real enough to pass muster.
You argued that religious exemptions will make the law more practical, by reducing the total number of infant circumcisions. My response is that religious exemptions will do very little to solve any problems, but will create many, many serious problems.
There are situations where politicians and activist groups ought to do whatever is necessary to get a bill to pass. This is not such a situation. There is a huge difference between religious exemptions in a law that permits something (such a law that permits legal, optional same-sex marriage) and a law that bans something (such as a ban on cutting off parts of infants.)
Respectfully, I think you are conceptualizing this wrong. Circumcision is not just a thing that adults do to children. It is a thing that children have done to them. The purpose of a ban is not “to interfere with the rights of adults to harm children”. It is “to protect children from having harm done to them”. As such, the rights of the adults must be secondary to the rights of the child. You cannot, in good conscience, endorse laws that exempt a class of children from protection. Religion is a red herring–the child is not old enough to choose his or her religion.
Religion is a red herring–the child is not old enough to choose his or her religion.
Children are not old enough to choose any number of things, including religion, education, philosophy, etc. This is why parents and the state both have legitimate roles in making decisions on behalf of children. The occasional Ender Wiggins hyperprodigy aside, is there a young child on Earth capable of determining whether Montessori schools, parochial Catholic education, generic US public schools, or Platonic tutor-book-log-and-student education is the right choice for their particular needs? No. The same is surely true of religious belief and doctrine.
What many advocates of these bans seem to gloss over is that there is a specific Constitutional protection for individual religious beliefs. With no first amendment, the argument over religious and nonreligious circumcision would have no particular resonance, but we do have the first amendment which, as interpreted, more or less prohibits the government from intervening in private religious behavior unless that behavior is simply outrageous to the polity. Circumcision is clearly outrageous to anti-circ activists, but it is equally clearly not outrageous at all to the very strong majority who practice it.
I think that the only way to have a Constitutionally valid circumcision ban is to handle it the way vaccines are handled – “the rule is that you have to do this (or not do this, as may be), but if you have a strong religious or other personal reason for not doing it/doing it, you are excused”. The idea that this would make a ban toothless is quite correct – just as vaccine requirements are fairly toothless. But it would also create a fairly major social pressure in the direction of compliance with the law; most kids still get vaccinated.
By this logic, all laws contain automatic religious exemptions. But that isn’t the case in practice. You can’t say, “My religion required me to sacrifice this human, to cut off this other person’s body part, to inject this heroin, to pirate this cd, to text while driving, to deny this black couple a hotel room,” etc.
There are, of course, all kinds of terrible laws in the status quo, and we could both come up with examples. I’m not singling out Amp’s religious exemptions as uniquely bad; anything that resembles the type of religious exemptions that Amp appears to be proposing is bad. The Supreme Court’s decision to permit the UDV Church to use hallucinogenic Ayahuasca resulted in terrible law. In my view, either Ayahuasca is so dangerous that it must be banned for use by everyone, or it is insufficiently harmful to be banned for use by everyone. If I want to use Ayahuasca, for the purpose of exploring my own religious beliefs, but I am not a member of the UDV Church, I cannot do it. That is seriously fucked up, and it involves government promotion of the UDV as the only true path to exploring that particular area of faith. Do you disagree?
There are Constitutionally valid bans on religious child abuse, Constitutionally valid bans on religious child marriages, and even Constitutionally valid requirements to seek medical attention for sick kids. The vaccine model is not the only type of legal precedent here.
You can’t say, “My religion required me to sacrifice this human, to cut off this other person’s body part, to inject this heroin, to pirate this cd, to text while driving, to deny this black couple a hotel room,” etc.
Right. And thus, the (interpreted) caveat “unless that behavior is simply outrageous to the polity.” The state may prohibit the Methodists from engaging in human sacrifice; they may not prohibit the Methodists from having church services on Tuesday evenings or from engaging in culturally-sanctioned body modifications. Change the cultural sanction, and you change the boundaries of what the Methodists can get away with.
I don’t disagree that in many instances (Native American drug use being only one of them), the system comes out with weird or wrong outcomes. But while most everyone who was abused as a child eventually says “damn, that was awful” (and thus contributes to a cultural consensus that child abuse is Bad and Wrong), most every male who was circumcised eventually says “eh”.
You can’t solve cultural problems with laws. You can use the law to nudge or shove the culture in the direction you want it to go, but if circumcision is a monstrous abuse of children, then you have to persuade people of the truth of that proposition BEFORE a circumcision ban will really work.
And even then, as Amp notes, it isn’t going to change the behavior of the religious groups that started (at least in historical time) the practice. Jews have willingly been flayed alive rather than give up circumcision; the much less intense legal sanctions that would pass muster here in the USA aren’t going to do the job either.
This is not true. It would have a profound effect on liability. If you carry a lawful circumcision and there’s an adverse effect then so long as you’re not negligent, and it’s just a unfortunate consequence of a legitimate operation, then you don’t have liability. If you carry out an illegal circumcision and things go wrong, then you’re in huge amounts of trouble. It will put people who are circumcised in a much more secure position should they have medical problems.
If it’s not going to make any difference, then why are you so scared of the ban? This is most dishonest argument about regulation you can make, trying to make out it won’t make a difference and should be dropped when the reason you don’t want it to happen is that you know it would make a difference.
Assuming you were actually serious. It’s flat out wrong that there is not one Jewish or Muslim parent who is wavering on this issue. They are not all fanatics hell bent on circumcision, like you are attempting to portray them. There are many who would change their mind because of very mild obstacles.
Phil: you appear to be saying what you think the law ought to be. That’s fine, but you’re not correctly describing the law as it is, and the Supreme Court case you refer to did not “make terrible law”. It simply followed already-existing law. (e.g., Wisconsin v. Yoder, Church of Lukumi Babalyu Aye v. City of Hialeah or Employment Division v. Smith.)
The courts particularly scrutinize laws when they are deliberately targeted at a particular religion, or when they are motivated by animus against a religion (see the Hialeah case for an example), rather than laws that are neutral in application but happen to adversely impact a particular faith. When the sponsor of a law promotes it with a blatantly anti-Semitic comic book, it’s gonna be a tad hard to call the law “religiously neutral in application”.
ETA: James, it’s actually Matthew Hess who is portraying Jews as “fanatics hell bent on circumcision”. You know, until the blonde hero saves them.
I think an implicit facet of the difference between religious and non-religious circumcisions is the idea that a child whose religion requires circumcision benefits from the procedure in a way that a non-religious child doesn’t. The irreligious may claim that children do not have religion until they’re old enough to choose, but that’s a highly contested claim. It is not uncontroversial or obviously true. There is a real loss to a Jewish boy in not being circumcised on the 8th day. It’s one some people may value not at all, and others value not as much as the possibility of a medical complication and others value highly. Parents get to make lots of similar decisions. I think attempting to shift the defaults is a good idea but banning is not.
I find the at least implicit conflation of medical and religious circumcision that has taken place in some people’s comments in this thread–those that advocate a ban that does not distinguish between the two practices–kind of disturbing. Not because I support either practice–I don’t–but because the conflation ends up robbing both those who practice religious circumcision and those from within that religion who oppose that practice of the right to define the practice in terms of their community, their religious beliefs, their history and the history of the practice. Jews who oppose Jewish ritual circumcision do so within a historical, cultural, religious and ultimately political context that is very different from the context in which the routine medical circumcision of infant boys and its opposition exist. I am not suggesting that only Jews can criticize Jewish circumcision; I am suggesting that if you are not Jewish and you are going to do so, especially if you are going to do so in the interests of including it in a universal circumcision ban, you have an obligation first to understand Jewish circumcision in the way that Jews do and to do so in a way that respects what circumcision means within the various Jewish communities that engage in the practice. To do otherwise is to engage in a kind of cultural elitism that is in effect, if not in intent, antisemitic.
I think the reason you find the discussion troubling is the nature of male circumcision: it’s bad, but it’s not so bad that some people aren’t willing to just say, eh, whatever, it’s not that big a deal.
In order to evaluate your own statements here, consider religious practices that you personally agree are unquestionably horrific, and see if you arrive at the same conclusion. Must one study the historical, cultural, religious, and political context of female genital mutilation in order to condemn the practice universally? What about even more horrific practices that may also be important to some religion somewhere?
I don’t mean to be flippant; I just think that you’re taking on a viewpoint that tacitly acknowledges that routine infant male circumcision might be bad, but it’s not very bad. And I think if someone comes from a perspective that routine infant circumcision is very bad, then they have a right to espouse that belief and advocate for policies consistent with that belief, in a way that treats everyone equally.
If something is discriminatory in effect, we evaluate that by measuring outcomes. If proponents of a universal ban on infant circumcision spend a year–or two years, or ten years–studying the various Jewish communities that engage in the practice, and then fight for the passage of a universal ban on infant circumcision, what is the change in outcome that you envision?
There are lots of instances where it is possible to be antisemitic while treating Jews exactly the same as everyone else. “Blue Laws” that forbid conducting business on a Sunday are one example (and I’m of the opinion that all such laws in the country should be invalidated.) A school policy which required every student to finish their school-provided lunch before they can go to recess might be another, on the days when the school passes out ham-and-cheese sandwiches.
Mythago writes:
I think what you wrote here is very reasonable. I do think it’s possible to hold the belief that a ban on routine infant circumcision is a good thing, even though the sponsors of this ban were proposing the ban in a way that marginalized religious minorities. But, I don’t question that the dude who wrote or illustrated the comic book may have had bad intentions.
Robert writes
The state prohibits everyone from engaging in human sacrifice, and permits everyone to have church services on Tuesday evenings, without regard to religion.
If your goal is to change the cultural sanction, then a public education campaign might be a better idea than passing a ban that includes exemptions.
If a town passed a law forbidding places of worship from holding services on Tuesday evenings, what would happen, do you think? Would we allow the law because it applies to everyone, even though it just so happens to strongly affect the worship ceremonies of the Church of Tyr? Under your view of the law, we would, because to do otherwise would allow a religious challenge to a law, or some kind of exemption for a religious group.
Well, no, because under my view, the law should never be passed in the first place. My position is that if a law isn’t important enough to apply equally to everyone, without regard to religious beliefs, then it isn’t important enough to pass the law. I don’t believe in religious privilege, period. It does not follow that I support random and arbitrary infringements on personal liberty just because they may not have been passed for discriminatory purposes.
And, why did you choose only half of my sentence as the basis for a hypothetical example? If Jim Phelps and his congregation swear up and down that their religious practices require them to drug, dismember, and sacrifice all of their thirteen-year-old daughters, would it be reasonable for me to say that under “your view of the law,” they should be exempted from prohibitions on such activities? (Obviously not–I’m just pointing out that you were unfair to me in your comment.) Would it be insensitive or unreasonable for someone to say, “With all due respect, it does not matter what you believe, Jim, and it doesn’t matter whether the thirteen-year-olds in question ‘consent’ to their own violation, because in this municipality/state/country, we hold that children have rights independent of their parents, and that children cannot give meaningful consent?”
Obviously, you’re not in favor of loopholes that allow human sacrifice any more than I’m in favor of randomly shutting down worship services for no reason. The issue with circumcision is whether banning it is a random, arbitrary thing (like rolling the dice and picking a day when worship isn’t permitted), or an attack targeted at specific types of believers (like a ban on killing animals for non-food purposes), or a prohibition of a behavior that deserves to be universally decried without regard to religion (like human sacrifice, rape, dismemberment, and child brides.)
It appears that some of the major proponents of the circumcision ban in SF were doing so for the purpose of targeting specific types of believers. And that’s unfortunate, because I think a case can be made that amputating portions of infants’ healthy genitals is wrong no matter who does it.
I support laws against statutory rape because they protect children, and as such I support those laws without regard to the beliefs of the adults who would choose to break them. Is that an unreasonable stance for me to take with regard to statutory rape?
Phil @27: Again, we’re talking about what the law actually is, not your view or my view of what it should be. And that involves a balancing test of religious freedom vs. state interests, not insensitivity or loopholes.
The problem is that when a group says “This law restricts our religious practice,” assuming that is true, then we have a conflict between that law and the Establishment Clause. Broadly speaking, the courts then look to the religious interest in question (how important is it to this faith? is it really a religious tenet, or something vague like ‘you are interfering with our overflow parking on Sundays’?), and to the state’s interest in applying that law to everyone. If the real purpose of the law seems to be to shut down an unpopular religious – as in the City of Hialeah case – the law will likely be jettisoned or limited. If, on the other hand, the state has a very strong interest in preventing that practice, the law will trump the Establishment Clause.
“I don’t believe in religious privilege, period” – hey, I don’t believe that obscenity should be exempt from the First Amendment either, but what you and I believe the law in these areas ought to be is very different from what the law is. Arguing that there should be no exemption for Jewish circumcision because ‘why should the Jews get an out’ is a legal nonstarter. The question is whether circumcision is a harm that the state has every right to prevent (like statutory rape, or human sacrifice) or whether the state’s interest in preventing that harm does not entitle it to suppress a religious practice (like animal sacrifice, or schooling past eighth grade). That argument is utterly sabotaged when the sponsor of a law writes blatantly anti-Semitic comic books to promote it.
A religious exemption would make the age-restriction (it’s not a ban) unconstitutional by imposing a test of religion. And it would be a test you could drive a truck through – who can prove that the Reformed Church of Latter Day Scienbuddhians (membership 2) does not require circumcision?
All neonatal circumcision is already unconstitutional because it deprives the child – and the man he will grow up to be – of (14th Amendment) equality with females, (4th Amendment) freedom from unreasonable seizures, and (1st Amendment) freedom to practise the religion of his choice without having had another, not of his choice, previously cut into his body. Sikhism, for example, values the intact body, not even cutting the hair. A circumcised man might feel he was “not a real Sikh”.
Neonatal circumcision is unlike any other “decision parents make for their childen” in removing a normal, healthy, non-regrowing functional part of his body, for life. It’s no coincidence that it’s also a sexual part. Circumcision occupies a uniquely privileged position in the moral spectrum, for reasons that have nothing to do with any unique moral virtue.
The sponser of the law is Lloyd Schofield. Matthew Hess has written three comic books, one of which includes some tasteless, unflattering pictures of a mohel. The first was about medical circumcision and included a “Dr Mutilator” who looks like Jabba the Hutt. The third is about African tribal male and female genital cutting. They would have remained obscure if were not for the uproar.
Phil:
I think, Phil, you ought not to impute reasoning to me when you clearly don’t know what I think.
I would simply point out that condemning the practice and banning the practice are two distinct things. In order to ban the practice effectively–assuming such a thing were possible–then hell yes you’d better know the historical, etc. context in which the practice and the ban exist.
And I don’t have time right now to address the rest of your response to me which is, I think, chock full of the precisely the elitism I was talking about. Hopefully, I will have time to do so later.
I support laws against statutory rape because they protect children, and as such I support those laws without regard to the beliefs of the adults who would choose to break them. Is that an unreasonable stance for me to take with regard to statutory rape?
A lot of states already make exemptions to statutory rape laws for people who are married, which amounts to making an allowance for the beliefs of the adults around the child in question. We just happen not to have much of a tradition of child (as in little kid, not teenager) marriage in this country.
In much of the West, the practice is linked to anti-masturbation attitudes that existed in the 19th century. Mind you, similar attitudes existed towards girls and women who masturbated as well – they don’t do FGM for it nowadays in the West though.
Once masturbation fell out of favor as a reason, it became the cure-all panacea to cure blindness, deafness, autism, what have you – anything that’s the flavor of the day.
Eventually it didn’t even need a reason, it was so habitual, that everyone did it.
I’m talking of non-religious reasons too. In as much as puritanical objections to sexuality (all sexuality ever) are not religious, but overly-moralistic.
Hugh7 @29: I recommend you go back and read the portions of the Constitution you cite. If the government mandated infant circumcision, which it doesn’t, we would definitely be looking to whether that mandate violated (say) Equal Protection, but it doesn’t, so we don’t. Children do not have a Constitutional right to have their parents raise them in a gender-neutral way. Circumcision is not a “search and seizure” under the Fourth Amendment. And nobody has an absolute right to be raised in a way that insures they will, as an adult, be able to join any faith they choose without ever ‘feeling’ that they are not entirely of that faith.
As for the Scienbuddhists, you have it exactly backwards: the burden is on them to prove that infant circumcision is an integral part of their culture, such that the ban violates the core practice of their faith.
Let me ask a question or two of the anticircers:
1) Do you agree that there’s a range of effects that parents have on their children’s lives (ranging from religious choice, to vaccine choice, to food choice, to work/family balance, to where they live, who they allow as childhood friends, how much TV they permit and what type, whether they read to them, whether the parents smoke, whether they buy life insurance, whether they pay for college, whether they get good prenatal care; whether they breastfeed; etc?
2) On that scale, where do you place circumcision? Whether or not I listed them, what are some examples of things which have more of an effect?
3) Of the things above, how do you want to treat the ones which you ranked as more important than circumcision?
4) If your answer wasn’t “I think the government has, or should have, authority to restrict them,” how do you distinguish it? IOW, is the difference one of focus (“I think hunger is of prime importance, but on a personal level I choose to focus on workplace discrimination,”) of degree (“I think that fighting workplace discrimination should be more of a priority than fighting hunger,”) of balance (“that is bad, but there’s a lot of good that comes from it”) or something else?
You can baptize me (a month old), and have me participate in a first communion before I’m old enough to understand what the heck Catholicism is (8 years old) – I won’t be forever marked by it, physically.
If you absolutely need to “do something to symbolize membership in your religion” do something non-permanent until the person can consent, fully in knowledge and without undue pressure (as an adult, and without being coerced into it, like this example: you can stay with us your parents, if you do x religious permanent commitment, but if not, byebye).
Baptism, save someone who’s allergic to water (if that even exists), or who actually drowns, is harmless, non-permanent.
I’m not sure if that is supposed to be a reply to me…? It doesn’t seem to answer any of the questions I asked, really.
gin-and-whiskey,
I’ll try to answer your questions.
Yes, absolutely. I mention this when people talk about how horrid it is for a child to grow up with same-sex parents. As if anyone’s childhood is perfect. Parents decide whether to raise a kid in the country or the city. They decide the child’s diet. They decide how much time a child will spend in day care.
Also, some parents abuse their children. Some parents murder their children. Some parents sell their children into slavery, or neglect them. One linguist raised his kid to speak Klingon–I thought that was an urban legend, but it wasn’t.
Is it fair to define circumcision as the permanent surgical amputation of a healthy body part?
I’d list things like murder, violent rape, abandoning a kid by the side of the road, and certain types of child abuse as worse than circumcision. (I’d rank FGM as worse than circumcision, too, but those things have been compared and contrasted enough.)
I’d put nonconsensual circumcision (of a healthy foreskin, on a healthy penis) in the category of child abuse. I think it’s more serious than sexually molesting an infant without leaving a mark. (Am I serious about that? Absolutely, yes. If you molest an infant in a way that doesn’t cause permanent damage, does it have an “effect?” Arguably, no. Should such practice still be banned by law? Yes.)
There have been cases where doctors were discovered to have been molesting children, while convincing the kids that molestation was medically necessary. I’d rank circumcision as more serious than that, because, as an amputation, it leaves a permanent physical mark.
If you found out that your daughter could never bear children, so you decided to surgically cut off her nipples…that’s about equal to circumcision. Cutting off the nipples of a girl who may need one day need them for breast feeding would be more serious–but both, I think, would be rightly viewed as horrendous.
In terms of choosing not to vaccinate your child, the importance/severity of that choice is dependent on what other parents choose. Vaccination serves a societal purpose as well as an individual purpose. If we can vaccinate very nearly all of a population, we can effectively wipe out certain diseases. If a disease is basically wiped out, the odds that your child will contract that disease are very small. But if large numbers of parents made that choice, the effect would be greater for both society and the individuals involved. As it stands right now, the choice not to vaccinate isn’t as damaging as the choice to circumcise.
I’m pretty sure that all of the activities that I listed as more important/severe than circumcision ought to be banned by law, as well. Along with several of the activities that I listed as less severe than circumcision.
Sure.
I tried to order the items you mentioned, but I couldn’t; they’re too circumstantial. To select one at random: “where they live”. Are we considering a choice between Seattle and Houston, or a choice between Seattle and (at the moment), Tripoli in Libya?
So I can’t place infant circumcision on a scale. I can only state that it is amputation of healthy, functional tissue (absent medical necessity, remember), performed on a human being unable to consent. It doesn’t matter how good or bad it is compared to something else. There are demonstrable downsides, all upsides are questionable, so it’s not necessary, so we shouldn’t do it to our children. This is not an ethical decision which one makes by comparing it to TV watching or nutrition…
…and therefore, I can’t answer Question 3, either.
The difference is one of simplicity: except to solve, with a high chance of success, a clear and present medical problem, surgery on people who can’t consent should be illegal. (And, though you would think that would be sufficient, surgery to perform an amputation should carry a higher penalty than just, oh, I don’t know, opening the infant up, having a look around, and closing again.)
Frankly, it frightens me that so many people can say, in response to that proposition, “Yeah, but …”
Grace
I think this is where the crux of disagreement comes in. Different people are weighing the downsides and upsides differently. Ban supporters or anti-circ hardliners are confident that “all upsides are questionable” to the extent that they believe anyone who thinks differently is objectively wrong and should have their judgment overridden by the government/majority/polity/what-have-you. Those who are anti-circ and also anti-ban weigh the downsides as strong enough to outweigh the upsides for their family individually, and perhaps objectively to a degree to want to try to persuade others to refrain. However, they see the downsides as small enough and the upsides as real enough (especially in particular religious communities) that people should not have their judgment overridden by the state.
There are a number of ban favoring commentators who take the position that the religious benefits of circumcision are no benefit at all to the child (and if they benefit anyone they benefit the parents at the expense of the child). I understand that belief, but it does not demonstrate an understanding of the role of male infant circumcision in the Jewish community, and it is basically why I disagree with the pro-ban commenters. I think it’s a benefit to the child. For me and my child, it is not a benefit great enough to outweigh the risks, and I don’t plan to do it. But I think disregarding it as a benefit at all is disrespecting the religious community to a degree that no one in that community will really listen to your opinon. If you don’t understand how it can be seen as a benefit to the child, then really, you’re not going to persuade me at all on the issue.
Partially for this reason I have been much more swayed in my own personal development and opinion on this issue by voices within the Jewish community who do understand the full cultural context and who make cogent arguments that circumcision nonetheless should be abandoned.
Darn. Editing fail. Hate to have to bother everyone else with request publicly, but:
Amp, is there any way you can fix the paragraph starting “4)” in post 38? I was quoting gin & whiskey.
Grace
Phil @37:
If you found out that your daughter could never bear children, so you decided to surgically cut off her nipples…that’s about equal to circumcision.
Actually, no. What’s equal to circumcision in males is excising the clitoral hood, as that’s the analogous structure in the female genitalia. I realize this doesn’t have the same inflammatory punch as “cut off her nipples”.
It’s probably accidental, Emily, but you have taken that statement from one context (medical) and placed it in another (Jewish cultural/religious). When I said, “all upsides are questionable”, I was speaking of medical upsides, not cultural ones. I thought it was pretty clear, but when another context is fundamental to a reader, it’s easy to see all things in that context, and probably to some extent unavoidable for all of us.
I won’t try to judge those upsides which are specific to the lived experience of a Jewish person. I am not Jewish.
You have illustrated beautifully why I bow to the necessity of a religious exemption. Because the religious argument is one people from outside the specified community cannot engage on.
Some of my blood relatives are Jewish. Some of my friends are Jewish. I grew up attending Jewish weddings, bar mitzvahs & bas mitzvahs (and also analogous ceremonies in other cultures). I have read a portion of the Passover story at a seder with my friends and their young child. As a child I picked up Yiddish endearments and … exclamations … from my mother, who presumably absorbed them from Yiddish speakers she knew. So I have some incidental exposure to a tiny subset of mostly liberal Jewish people. I lay it out in a bit of detail to show that I’m not making the “some of my best friends are Jews” argument. The familial and friendship bonds are complex, go back to my childhood, and very meaningful to me; they are not token.
But I am not Jewish, and I do not know what it’s like to grow up as a Jewish child.
Because of that, to some Jewish people, once we step past the medical aspects of infant circumcision, I am incapable of speaking on this issue. And that’s fair; I’m not a member of the group, so what business would I have trying to dictate to members of the group what they should think about issues which are inextricable from group membership?
Supposing I make a convincing medical argument that no one should be circumcised. In my experience, if the person I am talking to is pro-circumcision and Jewish, the next step is almost always something like, “Well, you can’t possibly understand all of the meaning circumcision has for people who are Jewish.” And that’s effectively the end of the conversation, because it’s true.
All I can do it discuss it from my own perspective, which is not coming from a Jewish life experience.
I would be happy to discuss the life experience I do have, and how it speaks to the issue of infant circumcision, but
Grace
Unnecessary surgery because your imaginary sky fairy tells you to? Unbelievably stupid. Doing it to an infant who can’t object? Unbelievably stupid and morally bankrupt. As others have said religious exemptions should never be allowed. If something is wrong, it doesn’t get less wrong just because it’s supported by bronze age craziness.
Fixed!
And by the way, I like it when people make these requests publicly, because it lets other readers know that making such requests is an option. :-)
?!
Before I say anything else in reply to this, Phil, I’d like you to define your terms. What do you mean by “permanent damage”? What would be “impermanent damage”? Can you give an example of each?
Grace
Thanks!
Grace
@St Ulfsten: virtually all secular Jews who don’t believe God exists nonetheless practice circumcision. What a puzzler! It’s almost as if there are strong motivations tied to thousands of years of tradition and culture behind this!
Instead of flapping your lips to make it clear you have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about, why don’t you expend your energy on getting the Establishment Clause repealed? That’ll eliminate religious exemptions for all laws.
I don’t think that’s actually true, mythago, but I admittedly can’t find a source detailing exactly how many nerve endings are in the clitoral hood. This is how one site explains the nerve loss with male circumcision:
I would greatly appreciate it if you (or anyone) could post a link explaining how many nerves are in the clitoral hood.
I would also note that, if you are right about the clitoral hood being analogous to the foreskin, and the ERA was in effect, I believe that circumcision would already be illegal, would it not? The relevant law specifically bars the invocation of tradition or ritual as a factor exempting compliance from its prohibitions.
Mythago, I was responding to a question which asked where I place circumcision on the scale of things that are important in terms of the choices adults make for children. I’m not sure if it’s reasonable for you to “correct” me on that. I wasn’t responding to a question that asked what things are medically analogous. If you want to contend that amputating a healthy clitoral hood is approximately morally equal to amputating a foreskin, I’d probably agree with that.
I also think that both of those things are approximately morally equal to amputating the healthy nipples of a child. If that has inflammatory punch, so be it. Then you’re closer to understanding why I oppose circumcision.
Part of the difficulty of discussing circumcision is because, in many cultures, we have an ingrained resistance to talking about or even thinking about our genitals. Genitals come with a lot of cultural baggage, whether we’re aware of our own aversions or not. So I think that analogies that take us out of the realm of genitals are useful. If you think that amputating healthy nipples is a worse thing to do to a child than circumcision, that’s your prerogative. I would rank them approximately equal.
Such as, “Yeah, but my religion requires it, so I’m going to do it anyway?”
I’d rather not brainstorm creative ways to molest children in this thread. I didn’t bring up the term “impermanent damage,” so I’m not going to define that. But I’d define “permanent damage” as something that leaves lasting effects, be they physical, emotional, or developmental.
Think of it like this: would it be possible for an adult to molest an infant in a way that involved both the adult’s and the infant’s genitals, such that any reasonable person would concur that said action is molestation, even if the action does not physically harm the child and the child will never remember it? If you acknowledge that such a thing is possible, then that’s what I meant by “molesting an infant in a way that doesn’t cause permanent damage.” If you can’t envision any such actions, I don’t think there’s value in me getting more graphic.
Neither can an infant.
I understand the call to try to understand people’s religions. I understand that there is religious prejudice and religious discrimination, and that some people face greater marginalization due to their religion than others.
That said, I think there are situations where it is reasonable and appropriate for a person to say, “Your religion is none of my business. I oppose Activity X for reasons that have nothing to do with your religious beliefs, and indeed, for reasons that have nothing to do with any supernaturalist beliefs. I think this is a philosophical debate for which we should strive to use materialist evidence to support our claims. If you disagree, there’s nothing more I can say to you.”
There’s something insidious about the idea that an outsider ought to learn more about a given religion so that she can refute the religion on its own terms. I find that practice to be fundamentally dishonest, like when atheists cite bible passages to counter fundamentalist Christian beliefs. If you don’t actually believe the bible passages are relevant, it is wrong to imply that you do.
I think it is not unreasonable to approach a debate from the perspective of: I am not arguing whether your religious beliefs are wrong. I don’t care whether your religious beliefs are wrong. I am arguing that your actions are wrong. If you hold a belief that causes you to want to do a wrong action, you can stop holding that belief if you want. Or you can figure out a way to reconcile your beliefs with a new course of action. It is not my place to craft new beliefs for you, or to look for loopholes in your belief system. There are thousands and thousands of religions in the world, and the number of potential religious beliefs that a human being could hold is infinite.
Mythago, you don’t know anything about what I spend my energy on. I’m against all religious exemptions no matter what the subject.
I couldn’t care less if there are “thousands of years of tradition and culture behind this”, it’s still stupid. All kinds of crazy and stupid shit go back several thousands of years. That we should continue doing something which is wrong simply because we have been doing it for a long time is not a very strong argument and I doubt you would use it to defend other harmful bronze age customs.
For those who think that circumcision is a form of child abuse worse than molestation or cutting open a baby just to peak at their internal organs (which, by the way, would have an astronomically higher rate of complications and death than circumcision does, even if done under hospital conditions), what do you think should happen to parents who circumcise? How do you picture the ban actually working?
Well, that cuts (lol!) the other way too, loads of guys with foreskins are very attached to them. But their lived experience has never done much to stop women or dudes who were circumcised as babies acting like they’re experts on the subject.
My other point is, if this is unconsitutional then why are people so scared of it? If you’re from a pro-circ religion wouldn’t you want the law enacted, so it would be stuck down and you would have a direct legal precident that circumcision was consitutionally off limits – rather than having to just rely on legal opinions from marginally related cases. It’d seem to me that outcome would put them on much more secure legal footing. Mythago’s having to write virtually every third comment here, wouldn’t it be easier to just have a single ruling we could tag to the top of the thread?
As opposed to uncircumcised men acting as if they’re experts on how sex feels for circumcised me?
By the way, I’m anti-circumcision. I just don’t think a blanket ban is likely to be an effective way of stopping circumcisions. We need to change minds, not just change laws, and insensitivity to Jewish and Muslim cultures isn’t going to change minds in a positive direction.
My other point is, if this is unconsitutional then why are people so scared of it? If you’re from a pro-circ religion wouldn’t you want the law enacted, so it would be stuck down and you would have a direct legal precident that circumcision was consitutionally off limits – rather than having to just rely on legal opinions from marginally related cases.
Actually, on this same point, I’m wondering why the anti-circ people are so keen to vote this in and have it struck down.
I think Jews don’t like it because if a ban were passed in a popular referendum, it would feel like a public vote against Jews/Judaism. Which is a scary thing for Jews. It also comes around the same times as several European countries are considering bans on kosher slaughter.
Nothing? As I read it the law would prohibit performing a circumcision. You probably could make a case on conspiracy, aiding and abetting, or solicitation; but I imagine parents would be left alone and providers will be the ones targeted.
I suppose they think it isn’t unconsitutional. I certainly don’t think either side can be particularly sure of their position, and people have a tendancy to read the law in a way that’s favourable to their own view.
Phil, you wrote:
which I assume is another swipe at my suggestion that if one wants to criticize Jewish circumcision one ought to know something about what circumcision means to Jews. I feel the need to quote myself here because I think you are passing over an important qualification I made:
Just to make this even more clear: Of course people can criticize Jewish circumcision as an act with consequences independently of the belief structure within which that action exists, and as an expression of the critic’s personal beliefs vis-a-vis circumcision as a practice, there is nothing wrong with that and no obligation to know anything about Jewish anything. However, if your goal is to persuade Jewish people that they should stop circumcising their infant boys (which I think, as a Jew, is a laudable and even necessary goal); if your goal is to institute a ban that will make it illegal for Jews to circumcise their sons and you want Jewish support for such a ban, then you’d better be willing to engage Jews at the level of culture–religious and secular–where circumcision has meaning. Otherwise, your concern for the boys whose bodies get cut ends up erasing, by definition, the Jewish identity into which those boys are born.
On a related, but probably different note: I wonder what people think of the adolescent rites of passage that exist throughout the world that include male circumcision. Those boys are certainly “of age” in the sense of knowing what’s going on and understanding its significance, and yet they really have no choice but to allow themselves to be circumcised, to embrace circumcision as a rite of passage into manhood. And what I mean by the fact that they have no choice is that while they could, in theory, refuse to be circumcised, the negative consequences of that refusal would be so profound–for themselves as well as for their families–that it is not a choice any of them would willingly make. Where does that practice fit into your analysis of male circumcision and bodily integrity?
Amp wrote:
I am always prepared to concede that I don’t know how sex feels for anyone but me.
This problem, that almost always people are trying to compare experiences when they have not lived both of them, is why I put a lot of stock in the statement of the one person I know personally who has lived both of them, my friend who got circumcised in his twenties and reports a diminution of sensation following circumcision.
Anecdote isn’t data, and your mileage may vary, but I’d be interested to see a study which reports on the experience of people who are in a position to compare. Given that circumcision severs nerves and removes tissue, it seems to me reasonable to hypothesize that people who undergo the procedure generally lose some amount of sensation.
Grace
Jeffrey:
I agree with you, 100%. The problem is that I have been told that this task is essentially impossible, because I am not culturally Jewish, and therefore I cannot truly understand Jewish culture and a Jewish person lives it. I agree that in an absolute sense, that is true.
I am not going to convert, and even if I did, I still would not have grown up Jewish. How, then, am I to attain this understanding of circumcision from a Jewish perspective, so that I can engage Jews at the level of culture where circumcision has meaning?
This is not a rhetorical question; I agree with you that meeting someone on their own terms one of the best ways to engage in discussion. I just don’t see how it is to be accomplished, in this case. Can you offer insight on this?
Grace
Richard,
Very few, certainly, but not none. (NSFW music video by South African band Die Antwoord, including a rap by an artist named Wanga, a member of the Xhosa tribe who refused to go through with their circumcision ritual.)
Case in point, the Mardujara of Australia, whom I studied briefly as an undergrad. You aren’t a man until you’ve had an incisor knocked out with a chisel, been symbolically dead for several weeks, been circumcised and eaten your own foreskin, and betrothed to a child-age girl. I think the betrothed girl is also cut genitally, but I don’t recall how.
I agree with you that while the adolescent technically has a choice, that the circumstances of the choice make it a highly coerced choice. I’m opposed to these practices, for the same reasons I’m opposed to infant circumcision. And my opinion has just about as much effect to change behavior as my opinion that heroin use is bad reduces heroin use. If I had a behavior-changing wand and could stop circumcision and similar practices, I’d be mighty tempted, so it’s just as well for everyone involved that I don’t.
Grace
I think that your definition of sexual assault is too narrow; it only needs to involve one set of genitals.
Beyond that, I think it would be pretty dicey for me to continue to try to discuss this thought experiment of yours, so I’m going to stop now.
Grace
Phil:
I agree with this.
I’d like to clarify something which I think you may not be clear on: I am not in favor of infant circumcision for religious reasons. I am against it. I am pro-religious-exemption only to the point where it results in fewer circumcisions overall. Harm reduction.
I also think that this ban in particular has been so tainted by that ridiculously offensive comic book that it’s very possible that it would do more harm than good. Fortunately, I don’t live in San Francisco, so I’m not in the position of actually having to cast a vote for or against a ban which I theoretically favor but which has been promoted in a way which guarantees ill will which could have been avoided.
Grace
First, Shalom, thanks for the link. That’s very interesting, though I wonder what the consequences that man have been in terms of his relationships within this community.
Grace, I wish I had an easy answer for you. I know there have been some books and articles written by Jews that question the need to continue brit milah and that advocate for alternative rituals; I just don’t have any title handy and I just don’t have time to go digging for them. Things at school–I have mentioned this elsewhere–are starting to heat up again and I am going to have to devote much more of my online time to dealing with that. So I am going to have to bow out of this conversation for now.
As I read it the law would prohibit performing a circumcision. You probably could make a case on conspiracy, aiding and abetting, or solicitation; but I imagine parents would be left alone and providers will be the ones targeted.
I understand that about the SF law. I’m assuming we all understand that the SF law won’t actually stop anyone who finds circumcision important – they’ll just go outside the city. But I also assume that people who favor a ban, as opposed to education and persuasion, would like to see the practice banned everywhere. Doctors and mohels don’t go around cutting foreskins off random boys. They do it at the request and invitation of parents. It makes no sense to penalize doctors and do nothing to parents, if you really think it is child abuse worse than child molestation. But religious parents are not going to stop circumcising. So it seems that you want a ban without an exemption just because it properly expresses your moral outrage, but you have no intention of enforcing it. Is that correct? If that’s not correct – if you really do intend for it to be enforced – how do you think enforcement should be handled?
I put pretty much zero stock in that.
Things would be different if I had a foreskin. But difference isn’t bad.
There are certainly things which I might be able to do/feel which I couldn’t do now. I suspect that there are things which I might not be able to do/feel which I could do now. Sometimes extra sensitivity is good; sometimes not.
But what I am certain of is that my sexuality and experience were incredibly affected and formed by my life, especially as a youth and young man in my sexual prime. If I had a foreskin from ages 1-21 I’d probably think it was weird as shit not to have one. If I didn’t have one from ages 1-21 I’d think the reverse.
We know that sexuality is very very brain-linked and tied to the psyche, as well as the nerve endings in the genitalia. I’m not sure how a single anecdote could even really account for the entanglement of history and mentality with sensation. If I had a foreskin reattached, would it feel good, or bad, because it was “different?” Would any regret I had about the procedure affect my interpretation? Would my memory of making the decision, and my memory of the physical process involved, have an effect? Would it have an effect on my remembered experiences and fantasies, when they were based on a different penis? Aren’t all of those answers relevant?
Or bodies and brains are hugely variant and highly adaptable. The question isn’t whether I could have more nerve endings in my penis if I had a foreskin (yes); the question is whether I’d be happier if I did (who knows?) And an anecdote can’t see that.
Words of wisdom, indeed, g&w. Similarly, just as parents should be able to remove the healthy, living, nerve-rich tissue from the sexual organs of their boys, they should also be able to render them deaf. After all, there are many deaf people who live happy, fulfilling lives. By your reasoning, a deaf parent should be able to permanently render a child of theirs deaf, since who knows whether that child will be happier being able to hear or happier being a full-fledged participant in the subculture of their parents?
ballgame says:
July 8, 2011 at 12:38 pm
Words of wisdom, indeed, g&w. Similarly, just as parents should be able to remove the healthy, living, nerve-rich tissue from the sexual organs of their boys, they should also be able to render them deaf. After all, there are many deaf people who live happy, fulfilling lives.
Er… no.
By my reasoning, “rendering deaf” would be problematic. It’s major. It is also, FWIW, a nonequivalent life.
Circumcision doesn’t render you unable to have sex, or have a healthy sex life; or really have much of an effect at all. Unlike the example you chose, the life of an average circumcised man is, in the relevant respects, exactly like the life of an average uncircumcised man.
The notion that being circumcised doesn’t “really have much of an effect at all” is bullshit. The “effect” is losing half the skin and a very significant portion of the nervous tissue from one’s primary sexual organ. The idea that circumcised men’s lives are “exactly” like the lives of uncircumcised men is a fact-free assertion. Who knows to what extent a man’s sexual behavior and experiences are affected by the procedure? Does the diminution of sensation create a greater desire for greater novelty or a compulsion to bed more partners? Does the trauma create problems with maternal bonding and possibly engender difficulties in a man’s subsequent romantic relationships as a result?
I don’t know the answers to those questions myself, though I have my suspicions. What I know for sure is that YOU don’t know the answers either, and your repeated assertion that ‘circumcised men are just like uncircumcised men’ isn’t based on evidence.
Your response that my ‘rendering a child deaf’ is inexact represents something of a shifting of the goalposts on your part. Your prior assertion sidestepped the inarguable reduction of nerve tissue in a circumcised penis and claimed “the question is whether I’d be happier if I did (who knows?)” We don’t know for sure whether a child of a deaf parent would be happier being deaf, but most of us would recognize the morally problematic nature of trying to use that criterion for determining whether such a decision is permissible.
But if you’d like, feel free to change my example to rendering a hearing child deaf in one ear and let me know if that would just peachy in your moral universe. After all, the lives of the average ‘hearing in one ear’ people are probably just like those who can hear in both ears, right?
The question of whether circumcision has an effect on circumcised men’s sexual experience/satisfaction/etc. seems to me to miss the point. Of course it does, though–and I think G&W is right about this–the meaning of the effect is far from clear. To suggest, for example, that circumcised men are somehow at a disadvantage because they are circumcised and are therefore “missing out” is to imply that circumcised men have, by definition, less satisfying sex lives than men who are uncircumcised and that, I think, is wrong. Far more pertinent is the basic question of whether or not we want to be a culture that routinely practices medically unnecessary surgery on infant boys–and I am talking here about medical circumcision–because that question goes to heart of what we think it means to inhabit a physiologically male body, and it is that thinking that needs to change culturally, I think, before the practice of routine medical infant male circumcision will end.
Why?
FTR, I really dislike fostering the impression that circumcised men are ‘damaged goods’, because it’s hard enough for some men to have gratifying romantic lives, and to add this reputation on top of dealing with the reality of having been circumcised is, in a way, adding injury to injury. Nevertheless, reality is what it is, and trying to pretend that the impact of removing 10,000 highly specialized nerve cells from an organ expressly designed for the purpose of sensation is “beside the point” is ridiculous.
Moreover, if you’re trying to bring home the impact of this appalling practice to the average person, you’re not going to do it by taking a postmodern deconstructivist approach like focusing on “the basic question of whether or not we want to be a culture that routinely practices medically unnecessary surgery on infant boys–and I am talking here about medical circumcision–because that question goes to heart of what we think it means to inhabit a physiologically male body,” or by putting air quotes around the words missing out when that is, in fact, literally the impact of the procedure.
I would like to say “thank you” and make a request.
First, I want to say “thank you” to all the commenters who did not talk about “men” as being implicitly the only people who might undergo penile circumcision. Because, although this still bends some people’s minds, of course there are women who have the experience of having had a penis. In this discussion, we made it all the way to comment #53 before anyone implied that penile circumcision can only happen to men. (Amp, I sorrow that it was you who broke the streak; for what it’s worth, it’s easy to do and I’ve also done it.)
My request: absent a compelling reason to do so, could we not gender penile circumcision? It’s almost always just as easy to talk about “people” as it is to talk about “men”. The most recent post illustrates the point (and Jeffrey, it’s not you in particular; it just crossed a threshold within me as I read your post):
Perhaps you could have easily have written “circumcised people” and simply “infants”.
Ah, thank you for that.
“Infant penile circumcision” would work here.
Infant circumcision of male-bodied infants also directly affects trans women. First, of course, most of us have sex lives using our penises, up until and if we undergo genital surgery. But also, for those of us who do undergo genital surgery, it helps to have that tissue intact for the surgeon to work with.
There is no way to know with certainty what gender a child will be. Obviously the easy money in an even bet is that the child will be cisgender. But if you happen to have a child destined to be a trans woman, she might want that tissue later on, and regret its loss.
Grace
Grace: Point taken. (Though, by the way, my name is Richard, not Jeffrey. Jeffrey is my middle name.)
Ballgame: I cannot miss out on something I have never experienced. Speaking factually about what infant penile circumcision removes is not the same thing as assigning to that removal the meaning it must, by definition, have in the sexual life of the person who has been circumcised, which is what language like missing out inevitably does. To say that I can never experience what sex with an uncircumcised penis is like is factually true; to say that, because I cannot have that experience, I am missing out is at least implicitly to privilege the sex lives of the uncircumcised over mine based solely on genital sensation and that is a very narrow, impoverished and impoverishing definition of sexual satisfaction.
None of which is to deny either the research about the consequences of routine infant penile circumcision, which you hint at in one of your comments and which I have read, or the very real anger that someone with a circumcised penis might feel upon the realization that the foreskin which was removed from her or his body had all those nerve endings, etc. that he or she will never be able to experience. It’s just that there is a very big difference between someone’s individual anger about what was done to her or him as an infant and making generalizations about people’s sex lives, the circumcised and uncircumcised alike.
I would also point out that asking a question about whether we want to be a society in which medically unnecessary surgery is routinely performed on physiologically male infants is neither post-modern nor deconstructionist. The same kind of question was asked about the unnecessary and too-routine hysterectomies that used to be performed on women for all kinds of ostensibly valid medical reasons and that practice has pretty much stopped, though I know there have been some exceptions, because the question was asked and it absolutely had to do with what we as a society thought it meant, wanted it to mean, to inhabit a a physiologically female body.
Gah. I’m sorry. Thinking back, that’s twice I’ve done that.
Grace
Your understanding of the English language on this point is extremely idiosyncratic, Richard. I believe it is common parlance to say that if someone never attended a high school prom, they missed out on that experience, for example.
OK, at this, Richard, I have to admit: I’m rolling my eyes. One could make a structurally similar argument about deaf people and those who can hear. I’m sure there are numerous deaf people who live rich, rewarding lives (and of course there is a high percentage of those that can hear whose lives are physically or spiritually destitute). This in no way diminishes the reality that those who have never been able to hear are missing out on a potentially rich life experience, and that anyone who renders someone else deaf has done real damage to that person. To note these facts should not be construed as ‘privileging’ those who can hear or taking an “impoverishing” view of sensory life.
To throw up our hands and assert — as g&w does, and as you apparently endorse — the odious notion that, “Gosh, who knows whether the sex lives of circumcised men are better or worse?” is to obscure the scientifically incontrovertible fact that circumcision is damaging. We may not know for a fact that this or that individual is leading a less satisfying life because of it, but to assert that you can profoundly damage the sex organs of millions of men in this manner and yet somehow not have an impact on their aggregate sexual satisfaction is to defy common sense.
That many men are able to lead sexually satisfying lives despite their circumcisions is a testament to humans’ capacity for resiliency; but that doesn’t mean their sex lives might not have been even better had they never been circumcised, nor should it blind us to the likelihood that some men may have been adversely impacted by this irreversible procedure in a profoundly negative way.
I won’t quibble with your terminology here, Richard. And in fact, I don’t really have a big problem with hyperintellectual brooding over the ‘meaning’ of this or that phenomenon. (Lord knows I’m guilty of enough of that myself!) My objection to it is solely when such brooding is used to block recognition that:
1. Circumcision is always damaging, and
2. Circumcision is almost always immoral (except when the man in question is a legally consenting adult or the procedure is used to resolve a serious existing medical condition).
The problem with your earlier statement was the way you prefaced it with the claim that the undeniable physical damage circumcision does is “besides the point.” In that case, you’re using your brooding over the ‘meaning’ of the procedure as a substitute for understanding its physical and moral realities, instead of as a supplement to dealing with those realities. The physical and moral realities of circumcision need to be kept front and center in the discussion, especially when dealing with ‘circumcision damage denialists.’
Ballgame:
Actually, what I wrote was
which I will simply point out does not deny the physical damage circumcision does. I’m not going to belabor that any further, and simply offer you, if you are interested, these posts which I have written about circumcision: here, here and here.
More to the point, though:
I am wondering how you define sexual satisfaction.
There are many deaf parents who prefer to have deaf children.
Before we get sidetracked, I think we can all stipulate that hoping for a deaf child, doing embryo selection through IVF to ensure you have a deaf child and declining a cochlear implant so that a deaf child will stay deaf are not the same as rendering a hearing child deaf. But it was you who brought up the example of deafness, so it’s worth pointing out that not only are there deaf people who live rich, rewarding lives, but there also are deaf people who are glad that they’re deaf, who like being deaf.
My point being, culture and lived experience matter, and it’s not hyperintellectual navelgazing to say so.
I didn’t go to prom, and I don’t feel the least bit like I missed out on anything. Or to get even closer to home, lots of people experience damage to their vaginas while giving birth, including, sometimes, permanent damage that has implications for their sex lives, and nonetheless remain glad that they had vaginal births because that was an important experience to them. Others have medically unnecessary abdominal surgery and don’t feel in the least like they missed out on anything. (And again, let’s all stipulate that this is different because we’re talking about adults who have some say in their care, though, in reality, autonomy in childbirth is routinely disrespected and ignored.)
Moreover, if you’re trying to bring home the impact of this appalling practice to the average person, you’re not going to do it by taking a postmodern deconstructivist approach like focusing on “the basic question of whether or not we want to be a culture that routinely practices medically unnecessary surgery on infant boys–and I am talking here about medical circumcision–because that question goes to heart of what we think it means to inhabit a physiologically male body,” or by putting air quotes around the words missing out when that is, in fact, literally the impact of the procedure.
The physical and moral realities of circumcision need to be kept front and center in the discussion, especially when dealing with ‘circumcision damage denialists.’
As someone outside your subculture and in the other one under discussion, my two cents is that “why perform a medically unnecessary surgery on a healthy baby?” carries plenty of weight with non-Jews and a small minority of Jews. Circumcision rates are going down. You’re winning the long battle, if not as quickly as you would like. But trying to persuade circumcised men that they’re really missing out is not something that I’ve seen change a lot of minds. Telling someone who has a satisfying sex life that it could have been so much better just doesn’t get that far. It’s going to get less far with Jews for whom circumcision carries cultural and religious significance.
Okay, so that was a monster comment, but let me put it another way: Saying “I was circumcised and I’m fine” isn’t an argument *in favor* of circumcision anymore than saying “I was in a car accident and I’m fine” is an argument in favor of getting into car accidents.
But focusing the discussion on sexual satisfaction seems, to me, likely to devolve into a does not/does too circular argument that goes nowhere.
But I’ve certainly been in the position of feeling like a certain line of argument was more important morally or intellectually than some other line that was more effective with people of a different world view than mine.
To throw up our hands and assert — as g&w does, and as you apparently endorse — the odious notion that, “Gosh, who knows whether the sex lives of circumcised men are better or worse?” is to obscure the scientifically incontrovertible fact that circumcision is damaging.
Driving a metal spike through sexually responsive tissue is damaging. Yet some people who have it done say they like it better that way.
Not to get all oogily personal on you, but my ears were a lot more erogenous when they were pierced than they are now.
I don’t think you can make the blanket assertion about “damage” that you want to make. Or rather, you can make whatever assertion you want, but “damaged = worse and it’s SCIENCE!!!!!” is unpersuasive.
Which means that ballgame’s example of parents who may want to surgically render their child deaf was not so far out of left-field that it can’t at least serve as a thought experiment with regard to circumcision. Some deaf people are glad that they are deaf. Some circumcised men are glad that they are circumcised. Does it therefore follow that we should permit parents to permanently alter their children’s bodies to fit their own, adult, worldviews? I’d say no–the argument would not be compelling in either situation.
However, I agree with chingona that I don’t think the argument about whether circumcised men do or do not experience sexual satisfaction in a way that is the same or worse than uncircumcised men is the most important argument to be making. What matters is that their sex lives (and other aspects of their being, including their bodies) are different, in a way that is permanent and unalterable. It is true that different does not necessarily equal worse. But it is also irrelevant that different does not always equal worse.
I think we can all agree that there are survivors of terrible things who believe themselves to be stronger or better off now that they have lived through something terrible. It is entirely possible for survivors of assault, abuse, torture, etc., to make the sincere claim that they are better off now, and that they would not change their past if they could.
It does not follow that assault, abuse, and torture cannot be universally condemned because of this.
ballgame @48: I’m mystified by your argument: we don’t know anything about the clitoral hood, but an anti-circumcision site says the male foreskin has lots of nerve endings therefore they are not analogous structures? “Analogous” doesn’t mean “identical” or “exactly as sensitive” or however you’re choosing to interpret it; it means that if you are trying to find a female equivalent of the foreskin, based on how identical structures develop into male and female genitals during gestation then the clitoral hood and the foreskin are analogous structures. If you’re trying to tell me that I’m wrong and the equivalent is the hymen or something, go ahead. But “nipples” are not the equivalent.
As for the ERA, I don’t think Hell froze over recently, so it hasn’t passed; but you’re more likely to have an ERA make certain kinds of FGS legal than make male circumcision illegal. The fact that a law says “no religious exemption” does not mean that the Establishment Clause ceases to exist. If a city passed a law forbidding anyone from speaking Arabic within city limits, with the explicit goal of preventing anyone from engaging in Muslim prayer there, would such a law be Constitutional merely because it said “and there is no religious exemption”?
Grace @58: Not being able to understand the perspective of an insider 100% does not mean “I have no way to understand how you people think.” In fact that’s a bit of an excuse; I can’t possibly understand the Jewish approach to circumcision, therefore I don’t need to give a shit and I can just yell at them to cut it out, a la Phil.
Mythago, I think your comment is a little unfair to me.
Do you honestly believe that one cannot hold, and argue for, the position that medically unjustified amputations on un-consenting children are universally wrong without studying the many different groups of Jews who hold superstitious beliefs about circumcision?
Does one also have to study the different groups of Muslims who believe in circumcision before one can voice an opinion? The Druze? West African animist groups? Native Australian and Tongan religions?
I think that there is nothing wrong with studying different world religions. I think that there is nothing wrong with people from within various religious communities working to eliminate harmful practices within those communities.
I understand that is possible for color-blindness to lead to racist outcomes, for gender-blindness to lead to sexist outcomes, or for religion-blindness to lead to anti-religious outcomes. It does not follow, however, that being color-blind, gender-blind, or religion-blind is intrinsically wrong, or that it must always lead to anti-religious outcomes.
I have no problem agreeing with the idea that supporters of this particular ban in SF were anti-semitic.
If you really believe that the outcome of the circumcision debate would be different if, instead of saying “Your religious beliefs are none of my business,” a circumcision opponent like myself studied the supernatural beliefs of all of the religious communities that support circumcision, what is the outcome that you think would be different? Because it sounds to me like some people on this board are saying that outsiders ought to understand Jewish rituals and beliefs so that we can manipulate Jews into stopping the practice on their own terms, rather than acknowledging (as I do) that our opposition to the practice has nothing to do with their beliefs.
Phil, I think it’s ethically fine to oppose circumcision, as a matter of theory, without knowing anything about the cultural practices.
But I don’t think that an activist seeking to reduce the prevalence of circumcision will be as effective if they maintain a “who gives a crap?” attitude towards the cultures they’ll be effecting. And I also think such an attitude, in an activist, would indeed be in effect anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim, if the activist is located in an area where there are significant populations of Jews and Muslims. After all, it’s not like the activist doesn’t know that what they’re doing is going to have a particularly pronounced effect on minority populations; they know perfectly well, but they’re indifferent to what happens to minorities.
No one would ever treat Christian traditions like that. It could never happen in this country.
Finally, where you use the word “manipulate,” I’d use the word “persuade.” And the difference between the words is more than rhetoric.
Oh, one more thing:
Your opposition to the practice has nothing to do with Jewish culture or beliefs. I have no problem acknowledging that.
But it’s not about you. It’s not about your motivations or your beliefs. It’s about the motivations and beliefs of the people who will be the most motivated to fight the anti-circumcision movement. Some of those folks are persuadable. But I don’t think that anyone who takes a “your beliefs and cultural practices are completely irrelevant superstitions” attitude is going to be the one to persuade them. The opposite, if anything.
What Amp said.
And I’m really not getting your belief that it is dishonest or manipulative to have a dialogue with somebody within their own belief system. You seem to think that the only way to persuade someone that their beliefs are compatible with not circumcising is pretending to share those beliefs. Why? What’s so hard about showing somebody that they can accept your arguments without throwing their whole cultural and religious foundation out the window?
Also, btw, there’s a bit of a drama-queen aspect to claiming you have to study “the supernatural beliefs of all of the religious communities that support circumcision”. Your assumption that it’s about ‘supernatural beliefs’ rather than cultural or traditional attachments is kind of Exhibit A as to why ignorance is a problem; and really, in the US, we’re talking about Jews and Muslims, not about dozens of groups that require exhaustive study to understand. What I’m really getting from you is a sense that you think these groups are superstitious dumbfucks anyway, so who cares what they think.
I pretty much agree with what Amp and mythago said. I’d just throw out a few more points. In Judaism, there isn’t a sharp line between belief and action, and if push comes to shove, action is more important than belief. So, that’s your first problem.
Secondly … and here I’m trying to put into words something that I think is felt on a subconscious and instinctual level (with additional caveats that I cannot speak for every Jew everywhere) … with all the blood that has been spilt to maintain Judaism over the centuries, there is a feeling that one, as an individual, does not actually have the right to just dispense with something so fundamental as this. For more secular Jews, to not circumcise is to say that not only do you not care if your kids aren’t Jewish, but to actually push them away from it. You might be a scofflaw in a hundred different ways, but to not circumcise would be to renounce your citizenship. It’s the step too far. And to take that step is to spit on the memory of every Jew who died for being Jewish.
Even as I write this, I imagine you laughing at how ridiculous it sounds. Do other Jewish people on this thread think I’m exaggerating? Like I said, I’m trying to put something into words that is more felt than thought, and it’s entirely possible that I’m overstating the matter. But in my experience, it’s something in the neighborhood of what I wrote above.
Personally, I don’t think non-Jews have much of a role to play in changing the conditions within the Jewish community that will make deciding not to circumcise more acceptable and less loaded.
That doesn’t mean non-Jews can’t oppose religious circumcision. But please think about how it sounds to say that Jewish children need non-Jews to protect them from their own parents.
If this is what you were aiming for in your earlier response to Phil, mythago, then I think that your response was even more offbase than I originally understood. I think it’s pretty silly to think that Phil was confused and somehow thought that female nipples were analogous to the male foreskin on some kind of biological structure axis. To me, he was clearly trying to produce a vague erogenous/moral equivalent that might elicit some kind of empathy for how damaging male circumcision is from an audience that would be profoundly dismayed at the mutilation of female bodies, and (I suspect) do so without invoking all the controversy and possible misconceptions about actual FGM practices if he were to have tried for a female equivalent that was more biologically analogous.
So, if we tentatively presume that the erogenous significance of the clitoral hood is much lower than that of the male foreskin, then it would not have been a better analog for Phil to have used earlier, even though it’s clearly more analogous on a biological structure axis.
That seems likely. Either way, I would hope this might bring home how disturbing it is that male circumcision remains legal among some feminists who might think this is no big deal. (FTR, I by no means think feminists are the major stumbling block here and in fact suspect that — as a group — feminists are more enlightened about it than the population as a whole.)
I can’t say. I can only say that I would not feel that way. But I’m also farther away from the culture/religion than “more secular Jew.”
Not all Jews feel that way (I don’t). But many do, in my experience. So no, I don’t think you’re exaggerating.
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Obviously, Jews who are firmly in the anti-circumcision camp will have resolved the matter for themselves, so I wouldn’t expect that you would personally feel that way.
I was trying to get at one of the reasons that Jews who don’t feel religiously obligated in the traditional sense might still feel compelled to circumcise in a way that might not occur to outsiders.
I think a lot of Jews (secular and religious) also put more stock in the (yes, questionable) health benefits and (yes, supposed) hygiene benefits of being circumcised and feel that it’s just what Jews do. Without all the cultural PTSD I described above.
I think the vast majority of traditionally religious Jews of all denominations are always going to circumcise. It’s a commandment, not just a symbol of membership.
And many Jews feel positively about it, that it’s a temporary pain for a long-term benefit – physically and spiritually.
Why would we presume that? Given that the structures have the same biological origin in fetal development and are physically analogous, I’m not sure why we would make such a presumption.
I know why Phil made the analogy he did; it just doesn’t make sense for him to have done so, other than (as he explicitly admitted) it’s a horrific image. But a woman’s nipples are presumed sexual organs, too – see any debate about public breastfeeding you care to name – and the equivalent of nipples in a boy baby are, well, nipples.
How will that work?
With a religious exemption, all that will happen is a clause will be added to the consent form where parents affirm a religious reason – so there’s an audit trail backing up the doctor, but that’s it. Anyone who wants one will be able to get one with no more difficulty than they have now – religious or not.
Without a religious exemption pretty much all the structure for carrying out the operation will be removed with minimal legal action. Most operations among people who aren’t very committed will stop immediately. Adding the exemption really does turn an effective law into merely a public statement.
james @91: If the hospital does not offer circumcision to parents as a matter of routine, Gentile parents are not going to say “oh, well, if that’s what is routinely done” or agree to it without thinking about it much; they would have to make an affirmative effort, after leaving the hospital, to have circumcision done. It stops being a sure-why-not operation.
Why would the hospital stop offering circumcision to parents as a matter of routine? I can see why they would if there isn’t a religous exemption – the law. If there is an exemption all they’ve got to do is add a clause to their consent forms and they can carry on as they currently are.
Since Jews require circumcision to be done by a mohel at eight days of age, it would be a little tough for a parent to say “Yes, we’re Jewish and we want the doctor to circumcise our just-born son in the hospital.” Even if we assume that some parents will claim a nonexistent faith to get a hospital circumcision, the clause would be a long legal paragraph requiring them to certify under penalty of perjury blah blah blah, just like immunization forms have. Parents would have to be pretty motivated beyond “oh, don’t you always circumcise? go ahead”. to do that.
Most religious circumcisions aren’t done at hospitals. Or, at least, every Jewish one that I’ve been to has been either at a synagogue or at the family’s house.
Why would the hospital stop offering circumcision to parents as a matter of routine? I can see why they would if there isn’t a religous exemption – the law. If there is an exemption all they’ve got to do is add a clause to their consent forms and they can carry on as they currently are.
In addition to the basic logistics that mythago and Ruchama mention, I guess it seems to me that if the general public is that attached to circumcision, the ban won’t pass at all, with or without a religious exemption.
Grace @71: Point well taken. I can’t promise I won’t mess up in the future, but I’ll try to get this right.
James @91: What Mythago and Ruchama said. ETA: And Chingona as well (we cross-posted.)
I can definitely see how it would be valuable for an activist to be sensitive to the worries that members of marginalized religious groups might have about discrimination and prejudice.
But I don’t think that’s the same as saying that it is inappropriate to oppose an act that is significant to a religion without regard to the religious beliefs in question.
I think my issue stems from my stance as a separation-of-church-and-state purist. To suggest that a person espousing a policy position is somehow acting in the wrong unless they learn about the particular beliefs of some specific religions strikes me as unreasonable.
But I think I’ve stated that point enough, and I think you’ve made good arguments in favor of practical reasons for activists to consider faith.
With regard to religious exemptions, I’m having trouble coming up with examples of legislation that included religious exemptions in the text, in the sense that the text of the law bans something and also specifies that the ban does not apply to certain religions, or that it does not apply to people whose religion requires the act that is banned. Are there examples? New York State’s recent same-sex marriage legislation, as I stated earlier, isn’t a comparable example; those exemptions only clarify existing law–they don’t specify that members of a religious group are exempt from the purpose of the law.
Mythago, you seem to be saying that the nipple comparison is inappropriate because it’s horrific. I think it’s safe to say that one’s views on the appropriate response to the amputation of healthy foreskins really hinges on how horrific one considers that act.
That is, even though I think everyone here is being intellectually honest, there is a difference between taking the stance of “Even though circumcision is horrific child abuse, religious exemptions are justified” and “Even if circumcision were horrific child abuse, religious exemptions are justified.” To me, the “horrific child abuse” part is a prima facie issue. If you don’t view circumcision as horrific, could you perhaps give an example of a law that does ban horrific child abuse that should also include religious exemptions?