MEDICAL FRAUD and the criminal assault of boys
The Case Against Religious Circumcision
Part One: Freedom of Religion
Norm Cohen
In April, a family court judge ruled that a four-year old Michigan boy cannot be given sacramental peyote at American Indian religious ceremonies.
In his decision, Judge Graydon Dimkoff of Newaygo County Family Court wrote. "Peyote is dangerous, and in general, should be avoided." He went on to say that the boy could ingest peyote when he was fully aware of the implications, was physically and emotionally ready, and had the permission of both parents. The federal government has allowed its use in Indian churches.
The boy's father, Jonathan Fowler, a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippiwa Indians in Traverse City , Michigan, attends the Native American Church of the Morning Star where peyote is ingested as a sacrament. Peyote contains the hallucinogen drug mescaline and is classified by the US criminal code as a controlled substance.
Martin Holemes, a Michigan attorney representing the boy's mother, Kristin Hanslovsky , characterized the case as a child protection issue.
Peyote has been a part of Native American culture for thousands of years. Those who ingest the plant believe it provides enlightenment and other spiritual and physical benefits.
This, of course brings us to the problem of religious circumcision.
Arguing the case against religious circumcision is a problematic one from the start. We as a society believe that it is wrong to publicly criticize another person's religious beliefs or practices. In a country where the dominant religion is Christianity, any practice originating out of the Judeo-Christian tradition is even more protected from public criticism.
We pride ourselves today on being a tolerant, diverse society. There are many who censor their opinions in favor of political correctness, cultural relativism, and even moral ambiguity. Absolutism that opposes another person's religious practice is viewed as intolerant, confrontational, and potentially dangerous.
Many who support the good work of NOCIRC in ending circumcision are nevertheless reluctant to speak out against religious circumcision. Its ancient history causes some to view the ritual practice as an exotic monolith that can never be touched. They feel powerless to change it.
Some remain silent out of a deep sense of collective shame. The history of anti-Semitism and Jewish persecution give people further reasons not to criticize a Jewish ritual. There is a strong, unspoken fear by many of being branded an anti-Semite. This fear is used by proponents of circumcision to stifle legitimate debate about it.
Anti-circumcison activists who speak out today against religious circumcision are working to end all infant circumcisions. It takes a paranoid logic to claim that caring about the welfare of baby boys is anti-Semetic.
Not arguing against religious circumcision is also problematic. It is possible for boys born of Jewish parents to have fewer human rights than other babies? It could be argued that making no attempt to protect these boys is itself anti-Semitic.
If circumcision is in fact harmful, then wouldn't we be hypocritical if we did not condemn it, even as a religious ritual? Wouldn't we be ignoring the real suffering of, and damage to, Jewish and Muslim boys subjected to the ritual who may one day grow up, as I did, to resent it?
The silence of child advocates hoping to avoid offending some people contributes to the denial that allows the practice to continue.
Proponents of the ritual defend circumcision on the grounds of religious freedom. Ironically, it is only the parent's religious freedom they wish to protect. What about the religious freedom of the boy? They continue to ignore the boy's ultimate right to choose his own religious practices, and with them, the markings he will have on his body.
Personal autonomy is the cornerstone of the modern American life. People are supposedly free to make their own choices. More than ever before, children can be different from their parents. It is quite plausible that a circumcised Jewish boy may one day grow up to reject circumcision for his own son.
The Sikh religion and others regard the human body as very sacred and condemn all efforts to modify it. A boy born to parents what circumcise him may, as an adult, choose a religion that shuns circumcision. This could isolate him from the community of his choice.
The Michigan peyote case illustrates that parents cannot excuse assaults on others, even their own children, by invoking religious freedom. The slightest cutting of a girls' genitals by a well-intentioned religious community wishing to continue their own ancient tradition has been a felony under the US law since 1997, when Congress outlawed female circumcision. The law specifically prohibits religious exemptions to female genital cutting of any degree.
As a religious practice, circumcision is in a class all by itself. No other Western religious ritual demands that cutting occur on someone's body, let alone a child's. Unlike a baptism and all other religious initiation ceremonies. circumcision leaves a permanent and lasting physical affect on a child.
Circumcision has become a religious ritual precisely because it is a sacrifice. It strips away and amputates specialized skin and mucous membrane that, in an adult male, would be a sleeve of flesh 3 inches long and 1 1/2 inches in diameter. This flesh, over one-third of the skin of the penis, performs protective and sexual functions for a man that are simply irreplaceable.
The Committee on Bioethics of the American Academy of Pediatrics stated in a 1997 policy statement:
Constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion do not permit children to be harmed through religious practices, nor do they allow religion to be a valid defense when an individual harms or neglects a child.
Religious circumcision as practiced by Jews and Muslims is the "token of covenant between God and Abraham." According to the Hebrew Bible, Abraham agreed to circumcision not just for himself, but for his male children and slaves. However, one cannot agree to give away something that is not theirs. Since infants are incapable of entering into agreements with anyone, the use of force must always be involved.
Few Jews and Muslims actually chose to be circumcised. When supporters of the religious practice speak of their long history of observing circumcision, they forget that it has always been imposed on a child with the blade of a circumciser's knife.
Religious circumcision is an assault because it is forced upon children and is a painful, traumatic, and, by definition, disfiguring surgery. No one claims that an infant undergoing a circumcision is having his own spiritual experience. A baby learns nothing from this assault except that in his world the stronger prevail at will upon the weak, and that his parents are powerless to stop them.
The religious ritual is especially troublesome because it is performed not on a boy's face or his arm, but on his organ of sex and regeneration. In violating his sex organ, his privacy is violated as well, for everyone now knows that he was circumcised, sometimes in front of his family members. Why should so private a part as a penis be held up to so much attention?
The focal point of this ritual deserves a closer scrutiny because of the long history and rampant denial of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of clergymen. If a clergyman fondles a baby boy's penis, it is a crime. If he cuts off part of that same boy's penis, it is a religious ritual. It is little wonder that proponents have resorted to defending their ritual as having medical benefits.
Ritual circumcision does have a distinct sexual character, however well-intentioned. The circumciser claims he is "making a man" out of a boy by manipulating his untouched penis to conform with what a penis "should" look like. Like sexual abusers who were abused as children, circumcisers, too, have been abused.
Circumcision destroys all the pleasure that could be generated by the foreskin. The circumciser physically intrudes into the boy's future sex life by altering his body's capacity for pleasure and his experience of sex. The circumciser's abuse will be forever present during the sex act, in the form of absent foreskin.
The case against religious circumcison is the same as that case against all circumcisions. It is this : a child has an absolute, universal, inalienable, and non-negotiable right to the intact, unaltered genitals he was born with. Neither physicians nor ritual circumcisers have the right to alter a boy's penis, as imperfect as they imagine it to be.
The reasons for speaking out against religious circumcision are the same as the reasons for speaking out against any circumcision. The people who speak out against it do so with the same legitimate moral authority and, ultimately, with the same success.
As important as every religion is for its followers, every religion must stop at the flesh of another human being.
Reprinted from "NOCIRC OF MICHIGAN" INFORMANT" - Volume 7 - Number 1 - June 2003
"IS CIRCUMCISION ETHICAL' - Winning Essay
PREVIOUS INFORMANT NEWSLETTERS
In the next issue: "Part 2: A Change in Practice." How a few Jews and a whole lot of American lawsuits will end the practice for good. This and other articles are available on the NOCIRC OF MICHIGAN web sit. The URL is : http://www.nocircofmi.org.
The "INFORMANT" is published three times a year by NOCIRC of Michigan. Norm Cohen, Director . Issues of INFORMANT also published the web site.
PO Box 333 - Birmingham, MI 48012 - Phone: (248) 642 5703
DIRECTOR'S MESSAGE - Reprinted from June 2003 Newsletter
Advocates for children should be advocates opposed to routine infant circumcision. Unlike some other issues, there is no moral, middle-of-the-road position on circumcision that can be taken by those who advocate and work for the best interests of all children.
Sadly, many in the mainstream child advocacy field have failed to comprehend the significance of circumcision as an abuse of children, even while they stress the importance of positive experiences in the first year of life.
Supporters of NOCIRC must reach out and inform child advocates everywhere of our efforts in order to help them understand the broader significance of our work to to their own.
Those who consider themselves progressive on child rights' issues often do not like to hear they are mistaken because they ignore the harm of circumcision, excuse it as a parent's right, or call us "too controversial". Their mistakes of judgment should not be left unchallenged inside the child advocacy community. There are boys coming soon that are counting on us!
On behalf of all the children, thanks! - Norm Cohen, Director