Trouble in Oregon

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How does one distinguish between anything acceptable and anything unacceptable? It ends up being arbitrary, a subjective value judgment and little more. The issue is that you cannot get rid of subjective value judgments in relationship to these human matters, and they are essential to any measure of human order. So, my answer is quite simple, there is no answer because there is no black and white to really refer to.

Wouldn't banning corporal punishment altogether be an answer?

However invasive, it would protect children from all adults including abusive parents. Violence towards children is completely unacceptable in my opinion whatever the motivation or the level of violence. Many countries appear to agree such as Sweden and Israel for example.

It could be an answer, but then again, so would allowing child abuse. The number of answers is infinite.

Ok, in your opinion that is true. The issue is that, is such a law really neutral to the participants in a society? I mean, it is forcing an ideological conclusion upon other beings, now this may be to prevent another ideological conclusion being forced upon other beings, but it doesn't escape ideology.

You are correct if you assume that morality is relative. I do not. I think "harm" can be the basis of a rational morality. Usually morality is relative because people think they are more important than others and than therefore their particular ideology (circumcision for example) is the correct ideology. I do not care what nonsense people believe as long as it does no physical harm to anyone. Circumcision and corporal punishment are harmful. They cause physical pain and are not medically necessary.

I don't assume that morality is relative, I say that morality is unproven, and irrational to hold to, and I think that the notion of "rational morality" is an irrationality because morality is at it's heart an irrationality. All that you are promoting is an ideology to stamp upon the world, and frankly, I do not want to live according to your ideology.

Medical necessity is false, there is nothing medically necessary, only things that are medically necessary for a purpose. If my purpose is to fulfill a religious obligation, then circumcision is medically necessary. If my purpose is to fulfill a religious obligation for another religion, then removing the heart of a willing virgin may also be medically necessary. Need is not objective, but conditional.

I don't think that there's an HCP in the world that would agree with your definition of 'medical necessity,' AG.

Well, ok, so? The issue is that my definition of necessity is different due to a subjectivist slant, therefore medical necessity ends up being different. This also means that the ideas of HCPs do not matter, because they are also, similarly based upon subjectivity.

Except that the HCPs are the ones that are going to decide whether anything gets done. If they don't think it's necessary, they won't do it (unless you can find a cosmetic surgeon to do it...).

I don't get your logic. You may have skipped a few steps or something. I mean, to me, if you pay for medical care of whatever form to whomever is willing to do it, then they'll do it and it will get done. I mean, I don't see how anyone other than the individual trying to get the operation, and some out of all prospective doctors will be involved.

Especially with doctors, there's this little oath of 'do no harm' involved. Slicing and dicing is harm; sometimes the harm of it is outweighed by medical necessity (ie the good outweighs the harm), which is what allows HCPs to do things like surgery and chemotherapy. Even HCPs who haven't taken any oaths tend to not want to hurt people for no good reason. So unless you want either a surgical team with no ethics, who will take your money and do whatever you want, oaths be damned, or a surgical team with no credentials, you're SOL for a procedure that is not medically necessary.

Since lopping off a chunk of highly-sensitive tissue is likely to require more than local anesthetic (especially if the patient is unwilling), perhaps unethical and/or uncredentialed isn't the best way to go. If the kid survives the general anesthesia, he might be lucky to wake up still male.

Ok, well, I doubt a doctor willing to perform any procedure will have a major moral problem, as after all, if need is subjective, then so is harm, which is why we still have people willing to perform these religious procedures.

harm (harm)n. 1. Physical or psychological injury or damage. 2. Wrong; evil.

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Excerpted from American Heritage Talking Dictionary
Copyright © 1997 The Learning Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

dam-age (damij)n. 1. Impairment of the usefulness or value of person or property

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Excerpted from American Heritage Talking Dictionary
Copyright © 1997 The Learning Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Now, harm relates to damage, damage relates to decrease in value, value is subjective, therefore I can say that damage is also subjective. This means that slicing and dicing isn't necessarily harm. In fact, there may be a theoretical being that enjoys being sliced and diced.


The issue that comes up is "good reason". Good reason is subjective. If you have a doctor who shares your religious commitments or sympathizes, then he might do it. If you have a doctor who believes in your right or quest to do something, then he might do it. I mean, there are doctors out there that help all sorts of different groups of people, including those with unhealthy fetishes.


Not really, once again, not all people will agree on medical necessity. Once again, keep in mind that the original issue was circumcision, something that some groups do not consider medically necessary. Not only that, but you've already brought up the option of plastic surgeons for aesthetic operations anyway, so, I am pretty sure that one of those could help as well.

Given that the kid's father is being supported by some Jewish associations, I am certain they have Jewish doctors that can perform the job as well. I mean, doing such a thing is only unethical according to certain notions of ethics, and frankly, given the number of doctors out there who can help people with various wishes, I don't think that an uncredentialed approach is necessary.

There's a big difference between performing an optional procedure on a newborn and on a 10-year-old. In the Jewish community, bris (?) is often done by a rabbi who has specific qualifications to do so; in the medical community, we do a lot of relatively awful things to newborns on the grounds that they won't remember any of it and therefore it causes less harm.

Yes, as you already stated, there are lots of different definitions of 'medical necessity,' but as I already stated, the definitions of HCPs tend to be considerably more narrow than the ones you have presented. This is a case that, at best, would probably have to go before a hospital ethics committee before it could be done - again, unless you found a plastic surgeon who specialized in pediatric genital modification.

There is a difference, certainly.

Ok, there are millions of doctors in the world, some of them in foreign countries. All that is necessary to get an operation done is just some team of them to do this. I don't think that this is an insurmountable challenge, it simply might be more difficult. Then again, my own notion of "uncredentialed" might be different than yours anyway, as you might just be referring to MDs who have qualified to do a special operation, I simply mean people with sufficient medical knowledge to pull off such a feat as to me, credentials aren't all things, just a sign of some very good ones. Finally, this entire conversation started off with my notion of how things may work in a free society, and one of the things that would probably be different would be medical care, which would be more likely to simply be patient oriented towards doing whatever a client wanted rather than holding to the standard notions of medical necessity, thus meaning that this conversation about the current system is rather meaningless anyway.

Your interpretation of the First Amendment is highly disturbing since you treat the boy as the father's chattel.

Here are what I consider the relevant facts:

• Circumcision is not a medically necessary procedure.
• Circumcision is painful.
• Circumcision is permanently disfiguring.
• Circumcision is part of the male initiation ritual of Judaism.
• The child apparently has been able to voice his own opinion that he does not want to be circumcised and that he does not want to become Jewish.

Because of these things, I would say the child definitely has a First Amendment right to protect himself from circumcision.

Oftentimes a child may be required by a parent or legal guardian to attend religious worship, and if a child has a conscientious disagreement, I would definitely see that compelling them to go anyway is a violation of their religious freedom; it is, however, impractical to enforce (this could leave the child alone for hours a week).

Well, the issue is that the 1st Amendment has nothing to do with chattel vs non-chattel. If the boy is not chattel then other laws(such as the ones giving him a non-chattel status) are more relevant. If the boy is chattel then the 1st Amendment is also irrelevant. My position is that the 1st amendment has nothing to do with this issue, which is the level of freedom the boy has vs the rights of the parents vs the rights of the other parents.


Where are you pulling this from the 1st Amendment though, so many people say FIRST AMENDMENT, but they don't refer to the text. The text I see says:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" in relationship to religion(I will ignore the parts on freedom to assemble and such due to their irrelevancy).

This can either be taken as a sign of support "prohibiting the free exercise thereof", or of neutrality "respecting an establishment of religion", which would then abdicate the authority over such a matter to different laws, such as those governing child welfare, which can include all of the points you put on your list. The issue is that to me it seems very clear that this isn't the 1st Amendment, because what does the 1st Amendment refer to? "Congress shall make no law", not anything involving individuals at all.

Because of this, I would have to say that all of the references to the 1st Amendment seem emotive, and very intellectually superficial, rather than a correct view of American constitutional law(not that I am an expert in such a subject). The only thing I can see that would reconcile this, would be a prior case where the 1st Amendment was used in a manner that justifies this reference, and I doubt that most people here are so lawyerly as to know prior court cases like that. But all in all, I find that most of the references to the 1st Amendment I see would be disturbing to me, if I had a high opinion of people at all, as they show very little signs of analysis of the 1st Amendment other than "hey, that's that law that gives people religious freedom", which looking upon the text, is true but in a different sense than most people recognize.

The child doesn't have religious freedom unless granted by other laws. Children are not legal persons, they are not chattel, but they are certainly not people and thus are not under the jurisdiction of laws applying to people unless specified otherwise.

At what age does someone become free to decide for themselves whether or not they believe in something? I suspect that the rights of belief come long after the child has already converted, or not, to their parents' religion; after that point, there's not much that a parent can do to change the kid's mind.

If the child were a girl and the father had converted to the saharan African form of Islam, would we think that it was ok for him to force her to undergo female circumcision? It has just as much religious validity, though granted it can be significantly more extreme (depending on the form).