The ruling of a German court to criminalize circumcision raises a number of issues which modern secular regimes are ill-prepared to sort out:
i) The ruling implicitly criminalizes Judaism. Now perhaps the German court lacks national jurisdiction. I’m not a German lawyer.
ii) The question is not, in the first instance, whether we personally approve of circumcision, but the degree of freedom we allow others.
iii) From a Christian standpoint, circumcision is not a religious duty for Christians. At the same time, we can (and should) defend the right of Jews to practice Judaism.
iv) From what I’ve read, circumcision has medical fringe benefits. But there may be tradeoffs.
v) From what I’ve read, male circumcision isn’t comparable to female circumcision.
vi) People who oppose circumcision don’t seem to oppose tattooing, body-piercing, or cosmetic surgery–so it’s not as if they think the body in its natural condition is sacrosanct.
vii) I don’t think all religions are entitled to equal treatment. And I don’t think parents have carte blanche.
At the same time, parents enjoy default authority to raise their children. There’s a strong presumption of parental authority which should only be overridden in exceptional cases.
Judaism isn’t Islam. And raising boys in Judaism isn’t child abuse.
viii) We can have a reasonable debate over the medial pros and cons of male circumcision. However, like so many “issues,” this is becoming another liberal cause. And it’s being grafted onto a standard liberal paradigm involving “genital autonomy.”
"we can (and should) defend the right of Jews to practice Judaism"
ReplyDeleteWhy do you think this?
i) Because it's a form of friendship evangelism. Pre-evangelism. Showing Jews that Christians are their friends rather than their enemies. We don't persecute them. We even protect them up to a point.
Deleteii) Because we should honor the olive tree that supports us (Rom 11).
iii) Because Jewish piety is generally consonant with Christian piety. There's a certain asymmetry here. Christians can pray Jewish prayers even if Jews can't pray Christian prayers. The apostles continued to participate to some degree in Temple worship. Even though some aspects of Jewish piety were obsolete by then, they weren't forbidden or illicit.
It's not a question of liberty when you are imposing body modifications on somebody else who has no say in it. You can't ask the secular state to allow it as a religious freedom, or else all manner of atrocities could be thus supported. BTW, I would oppose both tattoos, piercings and circumcision for myself and my family, but what people do to themselves is their own decison.
ReplyDeleteBabies don't have liberty. They are totally dependent on their parents. Children have only as much liberty as parents grant them. Parents constantly "impose" on their kids. Children, especially young children, often have no say in the matter. That's the nature of the parent/child relationship. It's asymmetrical.
DeleteAre you saying we can't "ask" the secular state to allow Jewish parents to raise their children as Jews? Does that also mean we can't "ask" the secular state to allow Christian parents to raise their children as Christians?
What "atrocities" are you alluding to? Are you suggesting that the secular state must treat all religions alike, regardless of how unalike some are? If so, why so?
Parents impose "body modification" on their kids when they send them to the dentist to straighten crooked teeth or fix an overbite. They impose "body modification" on their kids of they send them to a plastic surgeon to fix a cleft palette.
"Babies don't have liberty. They are totally dependent on their parents."
DeleteIsn't that why we have laws to protect them against abuses by said parents, including cutting bits off them?
"Parents impose "body modification" on their kids when they send them to the dentist to straighten crooked teeth or fix an overbite. They impose "body modification" on their kids of they send them to a plastic surgeon to fix a cleft palette."
A cleft palate is a birth defect; crooked teeth can interfere with function. Repairing something that is wrong with the body is very different to removing a healthy, functioning body part.
In the cases of purely cosmetic braces, I would argue that parents should *not* force them on their children - by the time a child is old enough to get braces, he's old enough to understand the implications of having vs not having them, and if he changes his mind later in life he can generally get his teeth straightened later anyway. Would it even be legal for parents to force an unwilling 12-year-old child to get cosmetic braces?
"v) From what I’ve read, male circumcision isn’t comparable to female circumcision. "
ReplyDeleteThere are many ethical and physiological comparisons.
-Both involve the removal of a healthy, functioning body part from a non-consenting minor.
-Both are practiced in a variety of conditions, from forced circumcisions at puberty to sterile, hospital circumcisions performed by loving parents.
-Both are largely practiced, in their respective parts of the world, for cultural and sexual reasons. The same arguments are used - that intact genitals are unsightly, that no-one will want to marry an intact man/woman, that cut genitals are cleaner, that cutting makes sex better.
-Type 1 FGM, the mildest form of FGM (and, with Type 2, by far the most common), removes the homologous organ to the male foreskin.
-Women who have undergone Type 1 FGM, and men who have been circumcised, respond in a variety of ways to their circumcision. Some, especially those who have chosen it willingly, claim it enhances sexual sensation; others feel it greatly diminishes it. Some report emotional trauma from having had their genitals altered without their consent; others are happy their parents did it, because the alternative is perceived as lower-class, gross, embarrassing or dirty.
-FGM has long been considered to decrease women's sexual desire and/or pleasure, acting as a type of social control. Male circumcision as it was popularised in the USA stems from similar thinking - it was promoted by Harvey Kellogg, who thought it would stop boys masturbating and recommended it be done without anaesthetic to teach the boys a lesson. (For girls who masturbated, he recommended dousing their genitals in carbolic acid. And he invented cornflakes. Quite a guy.) Today, most parents who choose FGM and MGM do not do it for religious reasons.
"vi) People who oppose circumcision don’t seem to oppose tattooing, body-piercing, or cosmetic surgery–so it’s not as if they think the body in its natural condition is sacrosanct."
How engaged are you with intactivist communities? I'm familiar with them, and the VAST majority of intactivists strongly oppose tattooing, body-piercing and performing cosmetic surgery on non-consenting minors. A few are OK with piercing babies' ears, on the grounds that it has minimal risks and does not interfere with the function of the ear, and/or because it is culturally important to some people (I disagree with both reasons, but there you go). Intactivists have no ethical problem with *adults* freely choosing to modify their own bodies, whether by circumcision or making their ears pointy like Mr Spock; the point is simply not to inflict such needless modifications on babies.
I might also point out that Christianity has a history with bodily autonomy - Gladys Aylward was hugely responsible for wiping out the practice of foot-binding in China, a practice with more than a few analogies to infant circumcision.
As far as the issue of Judaism goes, I can't understand why Christians should support circumcision on religious grounds. The Old Covenant is dead; Jews are not called to follow the Old Testament laws. To put it bluntly, they are called to repent and follow Christ. Paul explicitly states that circumcision is of no spiritual value. So modern-day Jews are simply wrong if they think God is commanding them to circumcise their sons. Why would we support a wrong theological belief that harms children? "Friendship evangelism" should not be taken to the extreme of allowing children to suffer genital mutilation. And if routine infant circumcision is outlawed (as it should be), allowing religious circumcision means Jewish boys are not protected while Gentile boys are - which in itself could be construed as a type of anti-Semitism.
ReplyDeleteI'm putting that rather baldly - I have great sympathy for Jewish parents who are familiar with the ethical and medical implications of circumcision, and I have seen many of them agonising over whether or not to do it. And I don't like, in general, laws which impact on religious freedom. But we are talking about cutting off bits of babies' genitals here, and ultimately my sympathy lies with the children lying in agony while their foreskins are crushed and snipped off.
Have addressed some of Smokerings issues here- http://vanberean.blogspot.ca/2009/10/to-snip-or-not-to-snip.html
ReplyDeleteHowever, seems the operative question is, 'How do you define "exceptional cases" for overriding parental authority? And is FGM "exceptional"?
my sympathy lies with the children lying in agony while their foreskins are crushed and snipped off.
ReplyDeleteMy son happily sucked on a finger soaked in sugar water, and local anesthesia was applied. To say he suffered no ill effects would be a significant understatement, whereas this here is hyperbolic.
Studies have shown neither local anaesthetic nor sugar water to be adequate anaesthesia for infant circumcision. Were you measuring his cortisol levels and later pain response to see how it affected him? Not all babies cry when they are in severe pain.
ReplyDeleteIf he had no complications, fantastic; but by the very nature of the procedure he undoubtedly suffered ill effects. His range of sexual sensation has been permanently diminished. You can't get pleasure sensations from specialised nerve endings that aren't there any more.
Ah, not the dreaded, omniscient "Studies have shown"!
ReplyDeleteHow interesting that you think "studies" can read infants' minds.
Hmm, and where did I say studies can read infants' minds?
ReplyDeleteHere's what studies can do. Studies can measure the levels of stress hormones in infants' brains, and note that they skyrocket during circumcision even when pain relief is used. Studies can note by neonatal facial coding that circumcised infants have stronger responses to pain stimuli six months after the event than intact infants; studies of the periaqueductal gray can show that changes in pain response can last into adulthood after a painful experience shortly following birth. Studies can demonstrate that newborns feel pain more intensely than adults. Studies can show that the dorsal penile nerve cannot be fully numbed via injection. Studies can demonstrate that no method of pain relief for neonatal circumcision is adequate except for general anaesthesia (which still doesn't take care of the postoperative pain). Studies can show that infants who appear calm and sleepy during a circumcision have actually lapsed into a state of neurogenic shock.
The research is freely available on the internet.
I wasn't aware that parents can read infants' minds either.
Do you have a response which engages with the facts I presented?
Are you familiar with the concept that correlation does not necessarily equal causation? You have assembled an impressive list of studies you allege exist, but in my experience "studies" are often mis-cited, their conclusions are blown out of proportion to what they actually evidence, and they are often full of unjustifiable assumptions.
ReplyDeleteAt any rate, the stress hormone and the grey things seem like they might have some merit, but I'm suspicious how they know that the infant experiences pain when those hormones/grey act a certain way.
"Facial coding" - right, right, right; that's one of those assumptions I mentioned. How do they know what the codes connote? exactly - comparison with other "codes". You know, like finding out the Earth is old b/c there are fossils located old strata that they know are old b/c there are old fossils buried in those strata.
how precisely do "studies" indicate that infants feel more pain than adults?
How precisely do "studies" indicate that that nerve isn't numbed completely?
Also, since infants don't remember anything, is that a very important concern? the parents might believe they have reasons to circumcise that outweigh that concern.
As for the neurogenic shock, I suppose; I'd need some reason to think, though, that this is a response due to pain experienced rather than a natural reaction from the body that had nothing to do with an actually experienced pain.
I don't recall claiming I can read infants' minds. Your claim amounts to that; I was answering you on your own terms. In the future, you'd do well to reason more carefully than that. Less fair-minded people might be tempted to completely dismiss your arguments when you say something ridiculous like that.