The Tactics of the Intactivists

Foreskin Man was apparently active around the globe recently. A regional court in Cologne, German, found that circumcision of a child below the age of consent was a crime. A governor of Vorarlberg Province in Austria banned circumcision of boys at state hospitals as "physical abuse." An initiative banning the procedure gained enough signatures to be placed on a San Francisco ballot, before a Judge tossed it off.

It hasn't been all one way, however. Germany's parliament endorsed the right of Muslim and Jewish parents to have their infant sons circumcised. Though the resolution was non-binding, it appears that the parliament is preparing legislation to back it up.

Male circumcision is a vital part of the Jewish religion and is important to Muslims as well. So important is it to the former that a ban on this procedure would be seen as "outlawing Judaism". It is difficult to imagine an American or European government going that far. Religious liberty is one of the core principles of modern liberal democracy. Indeed, it virtually defines the peace treaty on which liberal government is based. In return for accepting the authority of the secular state, religious groups can practice their various faiths without being molested.

This doesn't mean, of course, that religious liberty confers immunity to the laws. To take the extreme cases, a religious minority cannot practice human sacrifice or allow adults sexual access to minors. Somewhere between those extremes and teaching your kid Hebrew, a line has to be drawn.

While a reasonable person might believe that male circumcision is repugnant or unhealthy, there is simply no case that it justifies a broad violation of religious liberty and parental authority. In the United States, most circumcisions are motivated by health concerns rather than religion. That this is at least as reasonable as the other side is indicated by the following news, from the New York Times:

The American Academy of Pediatrics has shifted its stance on infant male circumcision, announcing on Monday that new research, including studies in Africa suggesting that the procedure may protect heterosexual men against H.I.V., indicated that the health benefits outweighed the risks.

But the academy stopped short of recommending routine circumcision for all baby boys, saying the decision remains a family matter. The academy had previously taken a neutral position on circumcision.

In short, this is the kind of judgment call that parents are called upon to make. Let them make it. If circumcisions offends you, print your literature and make your speeches. If you try to legally ban it that makes you a busybody. While you are printing your literature, you might want to make sure there aren't any foreskin comics in the mix. There is no doubt that some of the force behind the intactivist movement is old fashion hatred of Jews.

Comments

[Paul]

Unlike the U.S., circumcision is a relatively rare operation in Europe. Your article also speaks of instances where religious extremism is not lawful. Who decides which body parts are allowed to be removed and which religions are allowed to practice body part removal? Some Muslim sects also practice female circumcision which involves removal of the external genitalia. If your parents' religion mandated that your balls (or clitoris) were to be removed, would you still be writing articles about the religious freedoms of parents?

[Voice4Skin]

To amputate the foreskin of an infant boy is forcible, irreversible, often has complications, is unnecessary, and deprives a man of a choice about the integrity of his body. It is not an issue of religion. It is an issue of personal choice. My foreskin was amputated as an infant. I had my own sons' foreskins amputated when they were infants. I wish that I still had my foreskin (like many other men). I wish that I had not done this to my sons. Lets stop and ask ourselves "Why?" To my knowledge, there are no good answers. The fact that there are men who wish their foreskins were still present is reason enough to stop.

[Walt]

Ask a man that for medical reasons had to have this procedure as an adult and see what his thoughts are!

[bryan]

I love my circumcised penis, it does exactly what I want it to do and does it with style. Turtle necks are for Steve Jobs. The only people whining about this are busybody overprotective mothers. Let the men decide this one. Would I do this as an adult? Hell no, I'm forever greatful that I was cut as a baby. They heal in like two or three days. Doing this as an adult takes weeks of healing. And as for the idea that it is somehow going to traumatize the baby, look, for infants everything is traumatizing from being ripped from the womb to having gas. That's why they cry so much. A little snip with some properly applied anesthesia is a small payment for a life time of a better looking and more enjoyable badass piece of manmeat.

[August West]

As much as religions like to believe their beliefs and practices are timeless and unchanging, the fact is that they all adapt and change to fit the society the live within. It is time for mankind to raise up and define a basic set of human rights. These rights should supersede the right of either parents, religions, or governments. One important tenet of those right should be the right to grow up without being mutilated. Nobody has the right to mutilate a child, no matter how noble they believe their reasons to be.

[WrkrB]

I would bet most males in Western countries were circumcised at birth. I was. So was my son. The procedure in today's hospitals is very simple. What frequent 'complications' is 'Voice4Skin' referring to? Do I feel my parents somehow abused me or had dark motives? Certainly not. I am endlessly amazed at how courts and busybodies seem anxious to invent a preventive solution where no problem exists. There is, on the other side, a body of medical opinion that circumcision prevents subsequent health issues.

What's next? Court-issued injunctions against infant immunizations?

[bryan]

Circumcision is as about the same level of getting your ear pierced, albeit with a bigger needle (bout an 6 gauge on an infant, whereas standard piercings are around 18). But that means its a matter of semantics and that's what the debate is about, how much skin is too much skin. Small holes in ears and you people think its cute, larger hole in the skin on the shaft and all the sudden were amputating and mutilating the children. Come off it, something like 1000 people died in Syria this weekend in a bloody civil war and you people are worried about religious piercings (or according to many doctors, a preventative medical procedure, what with the reduced risk of STDs and infections). You people need to take all this free time you seem to have to worry about skin that doesn't matter and instead worry about the skin that does. Find a better cause that will actually help the world.

[MBenFaivol]

Alas, the commentators about this article or both ignorant of the latest Johns Hopkins Medical Research report findings that circumcision severely restricts penal cancer, urinary tract infections, and spreading sexually communicable diseases among other articulated benefits. But the claim that circumcision is abusive and without consent of the child makes me question the myopia of these self- asserted wise persons: do they think not feel that the child is subjugated to parental imprints when they are toi;let trained, or taught a language, or taught manners, or forced to go to school and compelled to learn, or to bathe, or to brush their teeth, or get a hair cut, etc. Isn't this too a fair assertion and intervention by the boys parents for the child's benefit???

[Ron Low]

What would one expect from the trade association whose members sell the procedure? OF COURSE they want insurers to turn out their pockets and give. But other medical societies have looked at the same data and reached the opposite conclusion.

Germany's PAP says it's "a scandal" to allow forced genital cutting of infants. Holland's recent KNMG policy says infant circumcision has "an absence of medical benefits and danger of complications." Perhaps not coincidentally, in places where doctors are on salary rather then getting paid per procedure, they don't find the procedure warranted.

Foreskin feels REALLY good. HIS body, HIS decision.

[bryan]

Hey Ron, you know what foreskin and your face have in common? They're both useless and stupid. So quit rubbing your foreskin cause saying REALLY in all caps means you got one hand on your Johnston while your typing. If your going to jerk it, take your hooded ass over to pornhub.com and you can go see all the uncut meat you want. FYI, PAP and KNMG are full of shit, just like you.

[Nate Thomas]

Other religious practices that are banned in the US: polygamous marriages, animal sacrifices, tattooing minors, underage marriages, and arranged marriages, to just name a few. So don't give me this "religious liberty" BS. You obviously don't understand what the term "liberty" means. Liberty means to be self-regulating (of your own body) and to have bodily autonomy. When your genitals are mutilated without your consent, your personal liberty has been violated. You fail miserably as a journalist.

And if religious piety wasn't such a cancer in the US, we would be teaching our kids "condoms, not cutting!"

[Bill Fleming]

Can't remember if the cartoonist was Bob Lee or Gahan Wilson, but I remember one of those wiggly line drawings of a prophet standing on a mountain talking to a cloud with little wiggly rays around it, saying "Now let me get this straight... you want us to cut the ends of our dicks off?"

[larry kurtz]

Genital mutilation allowed yet dilation and curettage murder: how conservative.

[larry kurtz]

Now breaking: RNC adopts plank that includes unfunded mandatory clitoridectomies. More to come….

[Ron Low]

This is not about whether intactivists are brilliant tacticians or clumsy PR dolts.

It's about a kid getting to keep his whole pleasure-receptive body and make his own decision.

Hundreds of thousands of men are enduring a tedious multi-year process of non-surgical foreskin restoration to undo just some of circumcision's damage.

Leave him intact. He'll thank you. Foreskin feels REALLY good.

[Ivan]

Ron Low, wow! Are you sure this isn't the "Donald" Pay?

[Of_reason]

Circumcision is pretty stupid.

Set aside ego for a moment, and think critically:

Seeing that sexually transmitted diseases are PRIMARILY spread by poor life choices and human behavior, wouldn't we as a society be better off teaching our children to make wise life choices, instead of paying strangers to partially amputate their genitals?

Hygiene is not an excuse. I sincerely doubt that there is any single man in the US that has a problem with not touching his genitals enough in the shower, whether for hygiene, or other reasons. Taking care of the foreskin in the shower takes about 5 seconds in the shower. 5.

I fail to equate the word "hygienic" with a procedure that creates an open penis wound in the environment of a diaper.

The antibiotics to treat urinary tract infections cost pennies at raw acquisition cost, so I fail to see that as a point.

Penile cancer already barely affects 1 in 100,000 men, circumcised or not, according to statistics, and is usually easily and non-invasively treatable.

And furthermore, I don't really think that circumcision does a thing to hold down the STD rates in this country. If it did, why, then, would we in this country where the majority of sexually active men have been altered at birth, have fantastically high rates of STDs like we already do, when we compare ourselves to comparably similar western nations, who do not practice infant genital cutting?

Look around you. Human beings are everywhere. And the vast majority (about %80) of men on this planet have intact, unmodified genitals.

That was the way that the majority of the human race lived for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, and we aren't extinct yet, nor do we hear stories about people's penises falling off because they are not circumcised.