Religious Practice Killing Children Must Be Criminalised
Religious communal practices bringing actual or potential harm to children, sacred text-based or no, narrowly or widely performed, must have no legal support, must be condemned and uprooted by civil authority. Our courts do not condone parents of seriously ill children praying-away known communicable/lethal disease in lieu of proper medical intervention. Nor should religion or cultural tradition confer legal cover for any medically unsupportable act done to a child. We agree that law will not support parents withholding a child from needed cancer treatment in favor of ‘giving it over to Jesus’. We do not allow our law to medievalize girls and women; we do not tolerate female genital mutilation.
Nor should law provide cover for ultra-Orthodox Jews who have never psychically emigrated from the Shtetl and yet reside, work, pay taxes, and bloc-vote, in Brooklyn.
After decades of wrangling, New York City has decided not to go after the ultra-Orthodox practice called metzitzah b’peh, whereby the circumciser, with his mouth, draws blood from a newly, ritually-cut, penis. Several infant deaths and dozens of herpes cases have been linked to the practice since 2000, the ritual definitively associated with increased and lethal risk in infants for herpes simplex virus.
New York City has never called for the banning of the practice — a practice, not an injunction of religious law — and that ought not matter — and the city has told ultra-Orthodox sects that it will allow the religious communal leadership to determine if and when to advise civil authority and only after a baby falls ill. New York will even stop requiring parents to sign waivers indicating that they understand they’re putting infants at serious risk.
We have hygiene standards for all manner of professionals, from hospital and restaurant workers to the artists who ink ankles and arms. That religion, that any religion or sect, that any religious voting bloc can demand and gain cover for clear-as-a-bell unsafe practices with children is wholly unacceptable.
The irony, of course, is that male circumcision itself has evidenced no physical or emotionally harm. Circumcision has been shown to be, whether performed as religious rite or as neo-natal hospital routine, in numerous ways healthful. The fears in ultra-Orthodox religious communities that stanching metzitzah b’peh will lead to renewed legal attacks on circumcision do not justify civil law cover for what amounts to attacks on babies. Metzitzah b’peh should be, in America, criminalised.
07/10/2019 @ 8:48 am
This is bullshit. The orthodox like to conflate tradition with law. They’re not the same.
07/10/2019 @ 8:50 am
This is horse-shit that harms, and kills, yes.
07/10/2019 @ 10:25 am
More than that: If a tradition harms children and isn’t law, it’s a violation of Halacha to keep following it. Given what they know, to continue is Jewishly illegal.
07/10/2019 @ 11:14 am
Jonathan, let me give you an important suggestion. Today you posted this same article on Facebook.
That’s fine…but there”s a better way to do this, a way that enables us to expand our audience at BindleSnitch.
It is very simple. Instead of posting the same article on Facebook, simply copy the URL at the top of this page, and paste that URL into a Facebook post.
If you go to my Facebook page right now, you will see my article about the sea water crisis. Facebook automatically picks up your featured image and the headline of the article…and you can add an excerpt ( a teaser paragraph) to the post. (It is best to write the teaser first, then paste in the link to your article.)
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Try it out.
07/10/2019 @ 11:22 am
great idea ty
07/10/2019 @ 11:34 am
On this topic: this is an example of the magical thinking that runs throughout the Torah, similar in kind to the transubstantiation of the Catholic Eucharist. Blood magic has always been intrinsic to Judaism. We no longer paint the posts and lintels of our doorways with lamb’s blood….but we used to do that. Animal sacrifices were regularly practiced in the Temple in Jerusalem. In fact, the ultra orthodox obsession with reclaiming Temple Mount in Jerusalem stems from the tradition that that was the only place where Jews were permitted to perform animal sacrifices. This becomes crucial to those who want see the Messiah because, in order for the Messiah to come, an unblemished red heifer must be sacrificed and the only place that can happen is at the site of the Second Temple.
The metaphor of Abraham killing the sacrificial lamb instead of his son was written into the Mosaic code as an implicit ban on human sacrifice, which can only mean that the ancient tribes that became the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea once did practice human sacrifice. In fact, the whole Jesus story is wrapped up in symbolic human sacrifice in that Jesus was expiating the sins of the Jewish people by taking them upon himself and climbing up on the cross. (Irony intended.)
There is much in the secret practices of Jewish sects that would shock and disgust other Jews. During the Days of Awe, right here in Boca Raton, the local Kabbalah Center practices Kapporat by swinging live chickens over the heads of the congregants on Evere Yom Kipur and then slaughtering the chickens and splashing the blood on the congregant. (I actually did this once. Never again.)
It is a big stretch from chopping off a chicken’s head to sucking the blood off an infant’s penis. I have not heard of this practice before. I had a hard enough time at my son’s bris. I would not have permitted it.
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07/10/2019 @ 11:49 am
I’m not sure the prohibition on human sacrifice means Abraham’s family originally partook in human sacrifice, though I suppose it’s possible they brought that from Ur. We know it was practiced by surrounding tribes with whom they were presumably intermarrying.
07/10/2019 @ 12:22 pm
Help me out here… how in god’s/jehovah’s/yahwah’s/buddah’s/etc. name would it be beneficial to a baby to cut the end of his penis off? Who the hell ever came up with such a horrid bit of sickery??? (and, no… there is no way I’m buying that it is in some way “healthful” to amputate body parts!)
07/10/2019 @ 1:44 pm
Of course you needn’t buy it; the medical community does.
07/10/2019 @ 2:25 pm
errrm… no. The ones that do seem to have an “financial agenda”.
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“Canadian Paediatric Society (CPS) (2015)
The CPS does not recommend the routine circumcision of every newborn male. It further states that when “medical necessity is not established, …interventions should be deferred until the individual concerned is able to make their own choices.”
Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) (2010)
The KNMG states “there is no convincing evidence that circumcision is useful or necessary in terms of prevention or hygiene.” It regards the non-therapeutic circumcision of male minors as a violation of physical integrity, and argues that boys should be able to make their own decisions about circumcision.
The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) (2010)
The RACP states that routine infant circumcision is not warranted in Australia and New Zealand. It argues that, since cutting children involves physical risks which are undertaken for the sake of merely psychosocial benefits or debatable medical benefits, it is ethically questionable whether parents ought to be able to make such a decision for a child.
British Medical Association (BMA) (2006)
The BMA considers that the evidence concerning health benefits from non-therapeutic circumcision is insufficient as a justification for doing it. It suggests that it is “unethical and inappropriate” to circumcise for therapeutic reasons when effective and less invasive alternatives exist.
Expert statement from the German Association of Pediatricians (BVKJ) (2012)
In testimony to the German legislature, the President of the BVKJ has stated, “there is no reason from a medical point of view to remove an intact foreskin from …boys unable to give their consent.” It asserts that boys have the same right to physical integrity as girls in German law, and, regarding non-therapeutic circumcision, that parents’ right to freedom of religion ends at the point where the child’s right to physical integrity is infringed upon.
In addition, medical organizations and children’s ombudsmen from a number of other countries, including Belgium, Finland, Norway, Slovenia, South Africa, Denmark, and Sweden, have gone on record in opposition to non-therapeutic circumcision of boys.”
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https://www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/for-professionals/medical-organization-statements/
07/10/2019 @ 2:32 pm
I’ll amend: the US medical community….
07/10/2019 @ 12:36 pm
In any other circumstances an adult, regardless of their gender or their religion, placing their mouth on the genitals of an infant or child would be going to PRISON as a pedophile. In MY mind, there’s NO EXCUSE “good enough” to justify someone putting their mouth on a child’s genitals. Absolutely NONE. It’s NOT “religious” for me… it’s that I object to people molesting kids and, even with the religious “justification”, this is still one of those things my head says “OH HELL NO” to.
07/10/2019 @ 2:37 pm
Jonathan’s original premise was that sucking infant dicks is perverse sexual molestation and is also unhealthy, which has now opened the door to another discussion about circumcision itself.
My personal experience with circumcision occurred around 70 years ago and while I was present, I have no recollection of it. Then, again, I was present for my son’s circumcision some 35 years ago…but I have no memory of that either, thankfully.
If left to my own devices, I would have foregone the honor, but his grandparents demanded it.
Amy: There are substantial differences of opinion about the value of circumcision. Notwithstanding the sources you quoted, there are documented studies showing that circumcised men have a lower incidence of certain types of cancer affecting the gentiles…and women who only have sex with circumcised men have a lower incidence of both cancers and sexually transmitted disease, so there are health benefits to circumcision, especially when you are living in primitive and often toxic conditions. It has been shown that female partners of men who are circumcised have a lesser risk of contracting the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.
So there are material health benefits that can accrue from circumcision:
https://www.webmd.com/sexual-conditions/guide/circumcision
There are even studies that purportedly indicate that circumcision improves sexual pleasure for women:
https://www.webmd.com/men/news/20090721/male-circumcision-improves-sex-life-for-women
Mrs. R: While I absolutely agree with you, in the present context, there is a historical context that might be the origin of the practice. In ancient times, they had no means of extracting blood from a wound other than by sucking the “bad” blood out of the wound. One example is snake bite (although that doesn’t in fact work and poses a risk to the care giver.) Within the context of the point of origin of the practice, it makes a modicum of sense. After all, we were bleeding patients for hundreds of years in the belief that bleeding patients could save them. It usually didn’t.
07/10/2019 @ 8:08 pm
I make no comment at all as to what I might consider perverse behavior. That does not enter my thesis here.
I do argue here that the practice has been shown to harm infants and I argue further that a religious insistence on practices that are shown to harm babies should hold no weight in discussions abt practices that receive civil law protection and those that do not.
07/10/2019 @ 11:07 pm
…and that I TOTALLY agree with! If an ADULT guy wants to get part of his wanger cut off for religious reasons more power to him. ANYBODY doing it for those reasons to a kid needs a swift kick in THEIR wanger!
07/10/2019 @ 11:02 pm
Alan, I never realized that WebMD.com carries more credibility than the combined Pediatric/Physician organizations of Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Australian, Britain, Belgium, Finland, Norway, Slovenia, South Africa, Denmark, and Sweden! Color me embarrassed!
It does seem kind of odd, however, that the “medical benefits” of religious genital mutilation is being sold as being “therapeutic”.
07/11/2019 @ 10:51 am
Amy, I know about all of those reports, but what I don’t know about is the provenance of those reports. So let’s see. Okay. The Canadian Pediatrics Association’s paper on circumcision includes this statement in the abstract for the article: “While there may be a benefit for some boys in high-risk populations and circumstances where the procedure could be considered for disease reduction or treatment, the Canadian Paediatric Society does not recommend the routine circumcision of every newborn male.”
Note that they are admitting that there “may” be some health benefits, which means, of course, that there are because they would have stated that there were no such benefits unless there was evidence that there is, which there is.
Also note that admonitions against the practice of circumcision never take into account how the practice of male circumcision affects women, although such studies exist.
We have had this discussion before on Open Salon. Neither of us has changed his or her mind.
07/11/2019 @ 11:02 am
As far as using Web MD as a proof source, unlike papers issued by medical associations, WEB MD carries a higher burden of responsibility because people actually take heed of their advice.Every article they publish is peer reviewed. This is not an advertisement, but more people rely on Web MD for advice than any other single resource, which means there are a lot of people looking at their content, and that helps to assure credibility. Professional association papers are not scientific papers. They are policy statements and therefore reflect the politics of the authors of the articles. And just for the record, the same Canadian Pediatric Association position paper in which the practice of circumcision is not recommended actually lists all of the health benefits I listed in my rebuttal.
My conclusion is that such recommendations, in direct contradiction of the perceived benefits of the practice, are effectively meaningless.
07/11/2019 @ 12:49 am
True, we did bleed patients for several generations… we also broke out stone or wood dildos to “cure hysteria” in women and leeches to “cure infections” as well. Not to mention giving people arsenic and all sorts of other toxic stuff. Heck for that matter, I’ve got a 120 year old bottle of “medicine” in the basement that contains BOTH Cocaine and Cannabis – and I’m 1000% positive there’s not a single pregnant woman on the planet who would be willing to break the seal on that bottle and drink it down even though it WAS prescribed back then for NAUSEA caused by Morning Sickness. Point being that just because something was used as a medical treatment in the soi distant past does NOT mean that it should be used today. Cobalt treatments were THE treatment for cancer back in the 60’s and NOBODY recommends it today.
07/10/2019 @ 8:02 pm
I look at this simply. My son is circumcised as much as anything because my brothers and his father and every penis I’ve ever seen was. When I asked my son about having his son circumcised, he was adamant that he would be. He knows better than I do.
07/11/2019 @ 9:10 am
When having a discussion about the practice of circumcision itself rather than about a traditional practice that carries health risks and no religious imperative, it might help to talk to males who are circumcised as to whether we feel mutilated. I’ve never spoken to a circumcised guy (and I was in college before I saw my first uncircumcised penis, even though for a lot of that time I was not in majority Jewish communities) who expressed regret about having had it done. Perhaps a more indicative way of looking at this would be to look at the Muslim male population. There are way over 500 million Muslim males over the age of thirteen on the planet, and unless there are medical exceptions pretty much all of them underwent circumcision at age thirteen. If this practice led to significant functional or sensory problems, we’d be seeing objections to the practice among the more liberal members of the Muslim population. I haven’t heard of any. Unlike with female circumcision, this isn’t a practice foisted on us by the opposite sex.