Why religious circumcision?

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Religious freedom should be a right everybody enjoys.

So why do the U.S and EU not ban circumcision of children, until the child can voluntarily agree to the surgical procedure?

As long as it is not medically required, it should be a choice of the child, not a choice of the parents.

Let's put the age limit at 12, and make it an individual choice of the child.

And please don't compare this to baptism, as baptism is only water. Circumcision different because it is a surgery and it has lasting effects.

Because ...religious freedom is a right everybody enjoys. You anwered your own question in the first sentence of your own question.

If the parents subscribe to a religion that has as a tenet that you circumcise your male baby then...the govt has no right to stop them from following that practice. That is the essence of freedom of religion.

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I am actually inclined to agree with you that it would be nice if the govt DID have a law that forbade you to slice up your kid until your kid is old enough to give consent to you slicing them. But lets get real...such a law would be infringement upon, and certainly not buttress "religious freedom". But staging Aztec style human sacrifices are also against the law, but also impinge upon "freedom of religion". So one might argue that your circumcision proposal maybe another such necessary intrusion into freedom of religion.

So if I have a religion with a tenet that I should abuse and perhaps kill* my own children, should the government have no right to stop me from following that practice? Is this the essence of freedom of religion?

*And no, that is not just a rhetorical question.

I didn’t have my son circumcised.
I wouldn’t let someone snip the tip of his finger off because of religious reasons so I for sure wouldn’t let someone go chopping on his private parts.
If he wants it done it’s his choice.It’s his body ,not mine.

We recently had a political proposal in Denmark to raise the legal age of male circumcision to 18, so people - and not their parents - could decide on their own if they wanted to get circumcised.

Polls showed that 73 % of the Danish population was in favour of the age requirement (and less than 10 % were against), but the government ended up refusing the proposal anyway.

It turned out that the government had been heavily lobbied (and perhaps even threatened with repercussions) by the US and Israel to reject the proposal.

That's exactly why we should pass the law. Nobody should decide the content of the laws in Denmark, but the Danish parliament, elected by the Danish people.

No Americans, No israelis, nobody, but DANES should decide for Denmark!

Our Danish government and the parliament, has committed treason against the Danish people!

Yes ofcourse it is religious freedom. How is it not that?

But thats irrelevent.

The topic TIP and I are debating is...what topic it is that we are debating.

Here is the issue...

If you start a post by announcing "folks should be free to use drugs", and then launch into diatribe about how they should keep pot illegal- you are contradciting yourself. Similarly you dont say "I am for the freedom to bear arms" and then say that the govt should confisicate all guns from private citizens.

But thats what TIP is doing in this thread. TIP is opposing religious freedom. But is claiming he is enforcing religious freedom. Contradicting himself.

I already stated that I am sympathetic to the thing you're proposing. The issue is not what you're proposing. Its the self contradictory way that you're proposing it.

Stop arguing your point with a falsehood (the falsehood that you support religious freedom when in fact you're opposing religious freedom). State it honestly and accurately by stating that you believe that there are ...limits to religious freedom.

Understand?

Last edited by naturalplastic on 31 Jul 2021, 11:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

The problem is that the OP uses the phrase "religious freedom" quite differently from how the Founding Fathers used it in the constitution, and how modern legal scholars of the constitution use it.

The founding fathers were all about protecting the individual from controls by the state.

If you wanna worship the Aztec Sun God the state should not stop you.

The OP is proposing intruding into the family to protect the child from the child's own family. And that intrusion to achieve that protection must come from....the state. He is for more government control. Not less govt control.

It would be like allowing Aztec religion, but forbidding human sacrifice. Curtailing unlimited freedom of religion.

Might be a good idea. I am for laws against human sacrifice. I am for laws against "honor killings". And am not opposed to this circumcision thing. But this thing is not really about protecting "the religious freedom of the child against tyranny by the parents". Its protecting the child's body from abuse. So why invoke "religious freedom" when thats at best irrelevent to your concern, and is actually the opposite of what you're proposing?

Religious freedom is also the liberty to be free from religion.
I want to extend that right to every citizen.

I'm not contradicting myself. It's you, naturalplastic, who are manipulating my words into meaning something quite different and claim YOU want religious freedom, by allowing parents to ENFORCE THEIR religion on their children!

The State should protect the liberties of its citizens. It includes children as well as adults.

You speak as if children are just the property of their parents. As if parents are somehow like slave-owners, and their children are slaves. Maybe it is like so, in our current society - but I want to abolish that system. Children should enjoy the right to freedom of speech and freedom of (or from) religion. These rights should be respected, no matter the age of the citizen.

Last edited by thinkinginpictures on 31 Jul 2021, 12:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Actually, your position here is to make "folk should be free to use drugs" equivalent with "folk should be free to inject drugs into others against their will" .

You are ignoring the fact that the OP was clearly about the religious freedom of the child, not the parents...

Many children are being abused by their family, and denied their basic civil rights.

You're ignoring this fact.

Children should NOT be the property of their family! They belong to themselves, but the parents are RESPONSIBLE for their well-being. To circumcise a child without a medical reason, should require the consent of the child.

Am not ignoring anything. I am 100 percent agreeing with you!

I am all FOR what you're proposing...which is that the government should get involved in the family, and that the government should violate freedom of religion to stop religion-based child abuse.

But I dont delude myself into thinking that curtailing freedom of religion is protecting freedom of religion. I call a spade a spade. You want government to control religion. So state it that way.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 31 Jul 2021, 1:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What does God do with all of those foreskins anyways?

Exactly. Founding Fathers were concerned about the protecting the religious rights of adults against religious tyranny by the state when they enshrined freedom of religion into they constitution. They were not concerned about protecting children from having religion imposed on them by their parents. Indeed what other way IS there for religion to propagate in the first place but by parents indoctrinating their own children? Only in recent decades has it become a thing for adult children to leave the church of their parents to either adopt another religion, or to leave religion itself. For most of history you just inherited the religion of your parents and grandparents. That was the assumed way in the days when the constitution was created.

Precisely because children are too young to pick a religion and to even understand what religion is...you cant claim to be protecting "the child's freedom of religion". Children cant pick religion. An infant cant debate theology with its parents. Claiming babies have a freedom of religion is a nonsensical as claiming that a new born baby has freedom of speech and of free assembly.

BUT...it is the DUTY of the state to protect children from physical abuse by their parents regardless of the reasons the parents may have for that abuse.

So if you wanna protect children from- say- being sacrificed to satan then fine. But to do so you are violating freedom of religion.

Actually, your position here is to make "folk should be free to use drugs" equivalent with "folk should be free to inject drugs into others against their will" .

So what if I am. So what?

Its up to the original poster to make his position clear by saying "I am for the freedom of everyone to use drugs, BUT I am also for the freedom to NOT use drugs. Therefore the govt should forbid folks from shooting up other folks with heroin against their will".

He is collecting them so he can use the material in them (combined with all of those fruitcakes folks give each other but never eat on Xmas) to ...create a whole second universe!

Every universe is comprised of fruit cake and foreskins from the previous universe?