Calling it Male Genital Mutilation is going too far, it shows utter disregard for enduring religious traditions of Jews, Muslims and others comprising nearly a fourth of humanity. Mind you, it is not a practice of a vanishing cult that is here today and gone tomorrow.
The right is obsessed with anti-everything; Abortion, Civil rights, Gays and Lesbians, Health Care, Hijab, Immigration, Mormons, Peace talks and Sharia among other things. The left does not want to be left behind in the competition to be offensive and negative.
The Jews cannot call this Anti-Semitism as the Muslims will spoil it by joining them and a new term has to be invented. The left may call this Anti-Circumcision, and add a feather to their portfolio of Anti-items.
It is time for the moderate majority to speak up for one's freedom to eat, wear and believe and not let anyone dictate the other, we are not a Taliban nation. So I say to them, guys we will give-up ours but you keep yours.
We have to speak out against this move through the ballot box in November this year. We cannot let anyone infringe on the freedom of the other, where does it end?
Male circumcision involves removal of the foreskin from the penis and every Jewish and Muslim male is circumcised. Jewish tradition is carried out within eight days of the birth of a child signifying a covenant between Jewish boys and God. The practice started with Abraham, who was circumcised when he was 99 as a sign of fidelity to God. There is no age limit set for Muslim Males although every Muslim is circumcised, it is not a requirement in the Quran but a practice carried on. My brother and I were circumcised when we were 5 and 8 years old respectively. The circumcision healed within three days, we did not miss a bit, as if it was never there.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), global estimates suggest that 30% of males are circumcised, of whom 68% are Muslim. The prevalence of circumcision varies mostly with religious affiliation, and sometimes culture. Most circumcisions are performed during adolescence for cultural or religious reasons; in some countries they are more commonly performed during infancy.
Jerusalem Post writes, "The measure, if it passes, would make it a misdemeanor to circumcise a boy before the age of 18, with a maximum penalty of one year's jail time or a $1,000 fine. The ban would allow circumcision only for medical reasons, without religious exceptions.
There have been numerous justifications for circumcision including health, quoting correlations between decreased incidence of HIV and circumcision.
Health is a justification and not the original religious requirement, let Jews and Muslims practice what has been their practice for thousands of years. We don't need justification for a practice that is 3000 years old. There should be no restrictions and people should have their freedom to practice their religion with or without the foreskin.
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S.R. Hewitt: The Importance of Circumcision in Jewish Law
John Shore: Captain Israel vs. Foreskin Man
Supriya Dwivedi: Quebec's Hijab Controversy: Bend it like Benkiran
Not true, at least not for Middle Eastern Arabs, who are every bit as Semitic as their Middle Eastern Jewish cousins. Semitic ancestry pre-dates Abraham, and is not an exclusive property of those who are of Hebrew descent.
Though much of this thread has been hijacked by the "health" maniacs, people who want to hack off parts of boys' genitalia on the flimsiest, most poorly researched and ethically dubious justifications that really reflect researcher bias (and the deeply psychologically sick self-protective nature of circumcision's defenders, who cannot look honestly at what was done to them as helpless infants), the argument here is really whether a child is a possession or toy that can be cut apart at any parental whim, or whether the adult that child will become has the clear right to have all the healthy parts of his body left intact, for him to decide what to do with as he chooses. Can parents choose to have their infant girls' breasts removed? That would prevent 39,000 deaths this year alone, and perhaps please the Goddess Diana...
No one disputes the right of an adult to choose circumcision for himself, but equally the "right" to force this butchery on a child is no "right" at all but a wrong that will eventually end, everywhere.
1) The SF initiative goes down to overwhelming defeat.
2) The American Academy of Pediatrics and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that all baby boys in the US be circumcised.
Apparently, about a year ago, some intactivists got wind, incorrectly, that 2) was going to soon happen. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christiane-northrup/we-need-to-stop-circumcis_b_470689.html where the author says:
"In the weeks ahead, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) are likely to publish a recommendation that all infant boys undergo circumcision". This is a huge mistake. etc". (Familiar anti-circ rant for the rest of the article).
I won't speculate on what will happen after 1) and 2) since I doubt it would get past HuffPo censors. :-)
Gay marriage was thought to be a dead issue just a few years ago, but repeated exposure to the topic has led to a widespread belief (even among evangelicals) that it will relatively soon be the law of the land.
As for the AAP, they lost all credibility with their recommendation of a female "nick" in the genitals - clearly an attempt to stifle discrimination claims if they come out in favor of male mutilation. The CDC would earn a reputation for accurate assessments of circumcision if they actually addressed studies demonstrating no value to the procedure instead of ignoring them. American parents are learning, day by day, that recommendations to mutilate their children come from ignorance, not utility or good faith.
As was explained by Dr. Jonathan Hutchinson, the father of routine male circumcision:
"It is surely not needful to seek any recondite motive for the origin of the practice of circumcision. No one who has seen the superior cleanliness of a Hebrew penis can have avoided a very strong impression in favour of removal of the foreskin. It constitutes a harbour for filth, and is a constant source of irritation. It conduces to masturbation, and adds to the difficulties of sexual continence. It increases the risk of syphilis in early life, and of cancer in the aged. I have never seen cancer of the penis in a Jew, and chancres are rare." ["A Plea for Circumcison," Archives of Surgery 2 (1890): 15]
I have had this argument with family members, who believe in little about religion, except cutting their sons. The first objection to circumcision within Judaism occurred in 1843 in Frankfurt. The Society for the Friends of Reform said that brit milah was not a mitzvah but an outworn legacy from Israel's earlier phases, an obsolete throwback to primitive religion.
According to modern scholars, circumcision is not even mentioned in the earliest, "J", version of Bereshith ("Genesis") nor the next three rewrites by other authors. Most importantly, the story of Abram is there in its entirety, except the part about the Covenant being "sealed" with circumcision. The parallel Covenant story of "a smoking kiln and its blazing torch" passing between the halves of animals and birds sacrificed by Abram is in J. Many biblical scholars agree on this point, and it is in accord with the mitzvot against desecrating the body.
American Christians who are not ethnically Jewish seem not to be reading their Bibles. The Apostle Paul couldn't be clearer. He tells Gentile converts to Christianity that if they get themselves circumcised they are obligated to keep the entirety of the Law (which he regards as an onerous burden). Paul understood the ritual of baptism to take the place of circumcision, as a seal of the covenant.
Historically, the churches of both east and west opposed the practice, too.
Christian friends in the Middle East have been shocked to learn of the American love of circumcision. They just shake their head in disbelief. For them, it's a Jewish and a Muslim thing.
any men die all over the world from circumcision (including over 115 each year here in the nice sterile hospitals of the USA, according to Thymos, the Journal of Boyhood Studies). Africa alone is a horror-show of death, mutilation and disfigurement when it comes to circumcision. But you'd have to read international posts to find this out - it's virtually ignored here in America because doctors (and men in general) have a vested financial and psychological interest in preserving the status-quo. The circumstitions website tends to gather up the latest data, including recent horrifying stories of men castrated by gangrene after the mutilation. Circumcision of either gender is sick - whether for cultural reasons, religious reasons, "health" reasons, whatever - and it needs to be protested, banned and eradicated.
than this get your
priorities straight dude.
http://circumcisionnews.blogspot.com/2010/05/fatally-flawed-bollingers-circumcision.html
The KPNG anti-circumcision document gives a guess that the number is about 2 per year. My guess is one every 5 years, based on how often I hear about such things.
I agree that making it illegal for people from North Africa to give a baby girl a pinprick on her clitorial hood is going a bit to far. We can allow a harmless tradition that does no harm. So change that law. You are just branding yourselves as crazies by trying to do what no other country currently does - making infant circumcision illegal.
In case you are unaware, circumcisionnews is an avowedly pro-circumcision website, so any "debunking" they do has to be examined thoroughly before accepted as valid.
If you had been following the "pinprick" stories in major media you would have been aware of the tremendous (and hypocritical) outcry that stood firmly against any female mutilation and firmly in favor of cutting males.
Every advance in human rights begins somewhere; I'm sure that when the end of slavery was first proposed in the West, there were plenty of people just like you branding abolitionists as "crazy"; and yet when these advances in human rights and human dignity come, it is the resisters to these positive changes in society that reveal themselves as the true "crazies".
1. to injure, disfigure, or make imperfect by removing or irreparably damaging parts.
2. to deprive (a person or animal) of a limb or other essential part.
Yep, circumcision IS mutilation, no matter who's sensibilities are offended...
Now that makes everything all better then, right?
I say wipe out religion along with circumcision.
chariots?
dude
up periscope.
"maximum penalty of one year's jail time or a $1,000 fine"
One would think it should be similar to that for circumcising a female infant.
The latter varies from state to state,
but is always more than a trivial fine and one year (max).
For instance:
Illinois: 6-20 years in prison
Maryland: 5 years max and fine
Missouri: 5-15 years
little girls and boys are
sit down now,
....different.
As you stated, circumcision is not a requirement to be either Muslim or Jewish, and it's only being done because that's what has been done for many many centuries. Being "traditional" does not make something right -- if it did we would still have slavery and polygamy and human sacrifice and castration and a host of other practices that are now considered evil (putting it mildly).
I don't think calling circumcision "male genital mutilation" goes far enough. It's actually sexual abuse and torture. I dare you to look up those words and tell me how they don't apply.
One of the great effects that the San Francisco and Santa Monica initiatives is having is that people are actually researching circumcision, learning the pros and cons, and speaking with medical professionals about it. None of the medical professional organizations endorses routine circumcision of infants in the US. None. Nada. Why? Because it provides no benefit to the immediate well-being of the child, and it unnecessarily exposes the child to the immediate risk of dying. Yes, dying. Babies die due to complications of unnecessary circumcision.
http://www.who.int/hiv/topics/malecircumcision/en/index.html
http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2010/9789241500753_eng.pdf
Circumcision on the other hand, can't even prevent transmission of the AIDS virus. If you want to avoid contracting the disease you have to practice safe sex in either case. Condoms are easily accessible for most people.
The courts have devised
methods for determining whether
a medical procedure has a potential
benefit that outweighs its potential risk.
It's by no means a rare topic for consideration.
It's not enough to show that there is some benefit.
Every imaginable practice likely has some benefit,
for somebody, at some time.
One would have to establish that there's
more medical benefit than risk of harm.
If such evidence doesn't exist,
a defense of circumcision based on its
medical benefits is unlikely
to get much traction.
On the other hand, to the extent that circumcision is a surgical
procedure performed without a patient's consent, it's hard
to see how the First Amendment would be sufficient
to declare a legislative ban unconstitutional.