Trouble in Oregon

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If you follow your logic AG, then a parent is allowed to torture a child so long as the intentions of the parent are good. Maybe the torture will teach the child. The parent is deciding that the child needs to suffer so that it can learn.

The parent also decides that the child should be circumcised but the government can't intervene.

Harm is being done in both cases. They may not be of comparative severity but if the government can interfere in one situation, it has the obligation to interfere in the other, regardless of the parent's will.

No, torture is not allowed due to child protective laws.


No it doesn't. The issue is perceived severity and the culturally accepted practices of society. If removing a boy's testicle were a common practice in society then that would probably be allowed to be imposed as well. Now, the issue is that you want law that follows consistent ethical principles, I do not think that the law is consistent, nor do I really think that the law can be anything but arbitrary.

Shouldn't the law be consistent though?

We are obviously just speaking hypothetically, since none of us has any influence over either this situation or the laws themselves.

I don't think it really can. I think that the law ends up having to balance between so many human desires that it arbitrarily cuts some short for the sake of others, and that this, combined with various historical ideological shifts will make these cut off points even more arbitrary. This ultimately results in a system of law that is not consistent in following it's goals but still must be followed.

Then again, I do not think that government can be consistent either. The liberal government will fail to be neutral because government by it's nature is non-neutral and because nobody can agree as to what the proper neutral state is, and the ideological government will fail to enact it's ideology because it will always be hampered by conflict in interests.

Circumcision is torture for many people. Your forcing someone to go through a surgery in which part of their penis is cut off, if the boy had been a woman they wouldn't dare circumcise the child. Once it is cut off their is no going back you can't get a foreskin back I think anyone who forces a child to have this surgery is disgusting especially for religious reasons I mean my god your not thinking about your child your thinking about you. Every person no matter how old they are has the right to decide what happens to their body there mind and their spirt a parent is a guardian of a child not a dictator of the child.

My understanding of Judaism is that a Jew is someone whose mother is or was a Jew or an adult (over age 12) who has voluntarily chosen to accept Judaism. If the boy is under age twelve, he cannot be a Jew, either culturally or religiously,

Theoretically the constitution guarantees freedom from slavery and from restrictions on speech or religion. As a practical matter children (legal minors) do not have many actual rights that adults are not free to ignore, including the above mentioned mentioned issues (indentured servitude, control of speech, and control of religious practice).

I live next door in Idaho and I hadn't heard of this case either. If the father is a "real" Jew, he will not want his son to be forcibly converted.

Well, I think that female circumcision is seen as more damaging and it less popular.

How do you guard a creature that is deemed incapable of properly making it's own decisions other than being a dictator of some form? If it cannot choose, then there is no way to protect it other than being a dictator, and if it can choose then there is no need for a protector of any sort at all.

Ok first of all children are not creatures they are people like you and I, they may not be able to voice their wishes but they are there. All babies want is love, respect and protection from those who look after them. Their desires are the most basic but those basic desires are shared by all humans. Also do you just believe that babies and children are nothing but mindless animals or what because that is the only logical conclusion I can come to.

Both female and male circumcision cause the same things to happen loss of pleasure.


Also what happens when that child is able to tell others what they want??? What happens when they find out their bodies were violated??? I can tell you because I am one of them, they grieve for that which they lost, anger grows at the inability for others to respect your rights, and distrust forms because how can you trust anyone else if they cannot even respect you and protect you at your most vulnerable.

Children and you and I are all creatures. Well, the basic needs do not include all human desires. I do not think they are mindless animals, but I think that for a number of legal intents and purposes they can be taken as such, and I think they often are taken as such. It took psychologists a while to recognize that children suffered psychological problems like adults could for instance.


I thought that female circumcision is known for being more complete in loss than male circumcision.

You can't trust anyone. That isn't just something they can learn, that is a fact about reality.

Well so if the circumcision can cause psychological why take the risk??? I mean if the child grows up wants the foreskin fine but being forced to have a surgery is wrong. I mean would you consider a white man telling his white son that black people are lesser people because of their skin??? No of course not parents don't always know what is right for their kids because they are not perfect. If the decision can wait 20 years then why not let the child grow up and decide for himself???

On a side note many Jews are actually against circumcision many say that it is abuse just some food for thought.

There are many forms of female circumcision done in a variety of ways, the most basic does not take away all pleasure but is indeed abuse. The basic form is close to circumcision what bothers me is its not viewed as mutilation more often after all your cutting a part of a sexual organ off.

You can trust people for the most part people are good they really are stupid idiots they are but they do have good hearts for the most part.

People do this stuff all of the time. Let's just say that a child wants to stay in a home town with friends, but the parents want to selfishly move, the parents will then move.

Well, denying the surgery to the child could also be argued as wrong. Not all people accept the model of individualism that you do, and instead argue that children are born into a culture. I think that white people tell or imply the idea that blacks are inferior all of the time, so I do not see the issue.


Nobody is perfect. Perfection is not the measure of decision making. The decision *can't* wait 20 years, it is immediate as a sign of being a part of the culture. If you know about circumcision, it is often called to be done 8 days after birth, and changing that is changing the understanding of the way things should work.

Ok, and not all Jews are really Jewish. Jew is a title with so many varying meanings that it does not refer to much really. I mean Jews are the culture, they are the bloodline, and they are the religion, if you are one, then you are Jewish, so the opinion of a Jew is relatively meaningless unless he is a specific kind of Jew.


Interesting, I have not studied that topic so much. Well, blame the culture.

No, you can't. Good hearts means nothing. A good hearted fool is sometimes worse than an intelligent but bitter enemy.

Well we are talking about a surgery not moving from one place to another, with circumcision their is physical damage done to the body along with psychological damage. Denying the surgery to to accept that the child has the right to integrity of body. Even Jews are turning their back on circumcision as they see it as barbaric. As stated before only around 20% of all American Jewish circumcisions meet the criteria to be call religious circumcisions.

No matter what this issue revolves around the right of a person to 1.) Religious freedom 2.) Body integrity 3.) Choosing their own path in life

Violation of the above led people into oppression of the mind.


Also one with a good heart is one who cannot intently do harm thus they are

I think this has gotten a little off track, from my understanding this thread started off as a discussion of whether the boy "M" was protected from involuntary circumcision by the first amendment. Clearly the constitution offers no protection to the boy, whatever the morality of the situation. In my personal opinion, it's immoral to indoctrinate a child in any sort of religion before they are old enough to know any better, but there is no way to prevent parents from doing so without totalitarian measures. Besides which, I'd oppose such regulation on libertarian grounds anyway, but I digress. The real issue of law here is what legal rights a minor has over their body, and I'm fairly ignorant in that arena. Morally, I feel that the father is wrong, but the courts may disagree with me.

But, the actual change is not really that different from a societal standpoint. This surgery is very very common.


But, the issue is that I don't think that "right to integrity of body" is generally accepted, same with little girls and ear piercings, the accepted cultural ideas of society tend to be the accepted legal notions of society. Not only that, but the number of Jewish religious circumcisions in existence does not have much to do with the reality of circumcision.


No it doesn't, it involves a minor, who can be denied all of these things, while allowing adults the same.

Well, I think parents are usually given the right to oppress the mind in a number of means as a part of the process of socialization. Frankly, "good" and "evil" really do not carry much of a part in the struggle of legal vs illegal.

If I were a pediatrician, I would not circumcise an unwilling patient who was old enough to say no.

Maybe it's my bias against parents choosing bodily alteration for their children when their children are old enough to understand what's going to happen to them and object, but I want to say that it's one of those cases of "your freedom ends where my nose begins." It seems that the kid is far older than the customary 8 days old that an earlier poster mentioned, so old in fact that he has his own thoughts and interests to be considered, and that some amount of consent from the actual patient should be required. Performing a surgery on a baby that is not aware of all the future implications of the procedure is one thing. Performing it on a child or adolescent (I'm not sure what age range we're talking about here) who DOES know what the issue is and continues to say no is something else entirely.

However, I AM troubled by the fact that it's the divorced mother of the child coming forth and saying "my child says he doesn't want to have this done by my ex-husband." I don't think that means that we can assume that the child wants the circumcision done, but, depending on how nasty the divorce was and how much animosity there is between the parents, I can easily see a situation in which the mother encourages her son to object to his father's wishes in one way or another, or outright skews what the kid said. I'd want to hear what the kid says directly, without either side being there to influence his opinion one way or another, before deciding.