State Senate cuts bill to ban circumcision

I wonder what body parts you'd need to want to remove from children before the childs "freedom to not have parts of my body removed" outweighed the "freedom of religion".

What about earlobes? If my religion says my kid needs to lose the earlobes, does that fly?

Girls in the USA are protected from any knife slicing off ANY part of their genitals. Why aren't baby boys protected? A foreskin is NOT a birth defect. Religion aside, it's the BOY'S penis, so parents should NOT be allowed to decide to get their boy circumcised just because they feel like it. His penis. His choice. Circumcision started in the 20th century because Dr Kellog demanded every boy be circumcised without pain medicine to prevent masturbation. He said it cured blindness, epilesy, polio, etc. All FALSE!! He was a crazy man who never had sex with his wife. Sad part is, America believed the man!! I don't eat Kellog's cereals to this day. Stop circumcisions today! Let the Jews circumcise their boys. But for everyone else in America: stop doing to your sons what your parents did to their boys. Stop!

I am a son who was circumcised at birth. I dislike being circumcised. So much, that I am restoring my foreskin. I much prefer having a foreskin and so does my wife.

The penis is very importent to men. Unfortunately, for those men who were circumcised at birth, they have no idea what it is like to have a whole sex organ. Few men can accept the fact that they have less than their whole penis. Having experience being both circumcised and having a restored foreskin, I think male infant circumcision would come to an end if only everyone knew how much better sex is with a foreskin.

I am an attorney and argued at the Massachusetts hearing on the bill to ban male circumcision.

I thought that the testimony against circumcision was extremely compelling. Senator Creem indeed did not appear to be very interested in the testimony, and I was told was overheard saying in the hall to a Jewish woman that the bill would not pass.

There is no question that removing the foreskin, which at birth is fused to the penile shaft, is excruciatingly painful. It amputates (the words of the American Academy of Pediatricians) highly vascularized, erogenous, living tissue, and completely changes the look and function of the sexual organ. It can cause death and the rate of complications is high. In short, it is clearly harmful.

The Supreme Court of the United States, in Prince v. Massachusetts, made clear that parents cannot harm or even risk harming their children (let alone killing them) for religious reasons. The Court said that parents can make martyrs of themselves for religious reasons, but cannot harm or risk harm to their children for religious reasons. The Court said that children should be allowed to reach adulthood and then make their own decisions about their own bodies for themselves. This also has been American law and the common law of Britain since the Magna Carta was signed in the 1200's, that every person is entitled to security of the person; i.e., bodily and hence also genital integrity.

Let me add that under the federal and state constitutions, people are entitled to speedy redress for unlawful acts, including touchings and woundings that cause harm. So the legislature failed in its constitutional duty to (a) give the bill a fair hearing, and (b) its duty to pass it.

Query also whether it is a conflict of interest for someone Jewish, who believes that God mandated circumcision, to chair a committee on the question.

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/352478/2210721

In much of Europe it is practically illegal to circumcise baby boys with an exception for Muslims and Jews to do religious circumcisions. I think it should be that way in Massachusetts also. I don't think it would be possible to outlaw male circumcision of minors who are Muslim or Jewish, because there would be too much protest.

I think it's insane for Christian parents to let their baby sons be circumcised though. According to the Old Testament males are supposed be circumcised as a religious sacrifice. But according to the New Testament, because Jesus died on the cross for us, males are no longer supposed to make the sacrifice of circumcision. In Galations 5:1-6 it says "IF YOU RECEIVE CIRCUMCISION, CHRIST WILL BE OF NO ADVANTAGE TO YOU"

As a Jewish woman, Creem had a conflict of interest in even considering this bill.

What a shame that the fate of this bill rested in the hands of a religious, self-interested woman.

This goes to show you that Church and State are ever wed.

Of COURSE this bill would never pass. Still, what a shame that it had to die in the hands of a biased judge.

Without a doubt the bill would still fail to pass, and there would be no end to the outcry of an "attack on religious freedoms."

But yet, how far do "religious freedoms" go?

It is very easy for us to see male circumcision as a "religious right" because for the most part, infant circumcision is still widely accepted, even in secular circles. American medicine has done a good job of lodging the image of circumcision as a "clean, American" thing to do in the American psyche. But what if this pre-existing love affair with cutting boys didn't exist?

Believe it or not, cutting girls happened in this country, and only until relatively recently was there ever a law to ban circumcising girls. In fact, insurance companies such as Blue Shield paid for the procedure. The ban forbids doctors from cutting female genitalia of under age girls in any way, shape or form, and there can be no religious exception. Why, then, this double-standard?

It's very easy to say that banning circumcision is an attack on religious freedom, maybe even a racist attack on Jews. But if so, why does nobody care that a ban on female circumcision infringes on the "rights and freedoms" of ethnic groups for whom circumcising girls is a traditional/religious custom?

Circumcising girls is an important rite of passage for quite a few African tribes. It is also important in many sects in Islam, and it is important in Indonesia. (The NYTimes published an excellent article on this called "A Cutting Tradition.")

What is it called when you give one group preference and religious privilege, but then deny it to another?

If we're going to defend "religious freedom," let's do it across the board, not just with people who practice a mutilation to which we are desensitized.

The same rights violated in a girl, are the same rights violated in a boy.

There will never be true equality until both sexes are protected.

Either both sexes are protected, or both kinds of mutilations are allowed.

It is not equality when one religion has "freedom" and the other doesn't.

What a shame that Creem is allowed to flaunt her religious privileges that way.

What a shame that children are but accessories for their parents here.

The time is long past for religious people to object to a ban on genital cutting on the grounds that it restricts their religious freedom. Where were they in 1996 when the US law to ban female genital cutting with NO RELIGIOUS EXEMPTION (no matter how minor) was passed.

To paraphrase Eli Weisel: "They came for the Muslims' religious freedom, but I said nothing because I was not a Muslim."

In fact the only person whose religious freedom matters in this issue is the boy (and the sexually active adult he will become) whose penis would be deprived of half its sensual pleasure-receptive nerve endings. A Jew in the US or UK is 5 times as likely as a member of the general population to attend an anti-circumcision rally. Several of the people who testified in favor of the Massechusetts ban are Jewish.

Foreskin feels REALLY good. HIS body, HIS decision.

It seems the senator wasn't aware of St Thomas thoughts about circumcision:

"But a private person may not perform such an ablation, even with the patient's consent; it would be committing an injustice to society, to which man belongs with all his limbs."

"You can cut a limb off only if there is no other way of insuring the health of the whole body. But you can always guarantee the salute of the soul by other means than physical mutilation, be-cause sin is essentially voluntary; thus, mutilation will never be permitted in order to suppress an opportunity of sinning."

Summa theologica. 1273.