Religious Special Pleading

I did. The legal weight is on the side of the parents making the decision because the child is not capable - i.e. the child is not independent. Prohibition of scarification is cultural and, for practical purposes, racial oppression. It should be the

I think it should be an individual decision. Denying a woman the right to make her own decision is the same as denying her the right to make her own decision about abortion. It's the same kind of oppression as forcing her to be circumcised or forcing her to have an abortion or forcibly sterilizing her.

I did read what you wrote, it's irrelevant. One or two? You're not that ignorant of history. Child labour, women's emancipation, abolition of capital punishment (sic). The list of progressive social reforms that 'injured' somebody else's priveldeged rights is very long. Of course their fucking is. It is not correct to shoot your neighbour in the head just for fun. Neither is it correct to cut off a child's clitoris without consent or medical reason. Some things are absolutely wrong.

But this is not a universal rule. For surgical type procedures it's only on the parent's side in the case of circumcision and medical needs. Otherwise the law states the decision should be stalled until the child reaches an age where they are capable of making a decision. This applies to (legal) recreational drugs, sex, performing military service, cosmetic surgery, labour... Hence the special pleading theme of this thread. Prohibition of sex with 15 year olds is too. Law is part of our culture. This of course puts you in disagreement with yourself:

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I think the job of our institutions is to follow the public will

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Our institutions and our parents don't agree with you about what is "harmful".

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I'm the one who agrees with the current laws

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No. You're advocating that the minority...should be allowed to impose their view on the majority

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Your "points" fly in the face of medical practice

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In any case I think allowing a person to choose scarification is less oppressive than preventing people from imposing it on those that cannot voice an opinion on the matter.

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It should be the

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I can guess where this is going but I'm not going to, I assume however it was just intended as emphasis on the previous sentence.In conclusion, since there doesn't seem to be any advance in the discussion - a parent - or someone else such a spouse or someone with power of attorney - may be allowed to consent by proxy on certain things - things it has been demonstrated empirically are timely in nature - medical procedures such as heart surgery, provision of certain risky medications, education...where delays can be seen to cause significant harm to the individual who is incapable of making a decision be they children or otherwise incapacitated. But this fails as a justification for allowing universal powers to consent to all possible activities that would normally require consent. And thus you can't argue 'parents can give consent for circumcision therefore it is morally justifiable'.The best argument, indeed your only good one, is related to religious persecution. I expect however, you would not agree to banning circumcision unless there is a religious reason. And if you were to agree with that you would necessarily be arguing for religious special pleading.I should point out that there are religious/cultural practices that are banned and I suspect you agree, to some extent, with those bans. Lets list some:a) stoning adulterers, homosexuals and those that work on the Sabbath b) slavery / indentured servitude
c) Flogging adulterers and unbelievers
d) removing the hands of thieves
e) human sacrifice (what if the victim consents? What if they were 'brainwashed' all their life into that consent?)
f) beating children with rods
g) Declining to employ people of the 'wrong' religion.
h) Marrying children off and the consummation thereof
i) Footbinding
j) Beating one's spouseIs this also racial oppression?

You're equivocating. We're talking about parents forceably mutilating children - not the women making their own choice. The children do not make an individual decision.

Don't be silly.If doctors do it for non-religious reasons, how can it be a religious issue? Abortion, prohibition of alcohol, prohibition of drugs.... The list of ending government interference in individual freedoms is also long. Are you being deliberately dishonest or did the goalposts wander off on their own volition? We were talking about male circumcision specifically.

That's a pretty broad statement. There's no such thing as "the law" which applies in all jurisdictions. Prohibition is a part of our culture that doesn't work, which is why we need special pleading for 15-year-olds having sex with other 15-year-olds. I don't follow your logic. Please elaborate. As I have said, my argument is not a religious one. Those examples, with the exception of employment, are not cultural practices in our society that we need to concern ourselves with.

You can't divorce childhood circumcision, either male or female, from adult circumcision, either male or female. In all cases, it's the adult who makes the decision - because the child can't. It doesn't matter if you think it's "unnecessary". It's the decision of the individual involved that should count.

And Tangles basic argument, I think, is that social consensus should usually over ride individual or parental rights if for the defined best interests of the child. ...though I think he also would love to see religion and archaic religious practices banned using the same criteria. In other words, the argument is basically whether the decisions regarding the child are best left up to the parent or to society-at-large?Tangle has gleefully noted in the past that archaic religious beliefs are on their way out in society and he would love to see the circumcised children protected as well.

This whole weird idea of a rational science-based utopia is not gonna happen on my watch. The level of harm needs to rise higher than the supposed harm of circumcision before we will allow the law to step in.

A few centuries ago, the question was whether the decisions regarding the child are best left up to the parent or to the king. Then we invented democracy.Thomas Paine said something to the effect that locally-made decisions tend to be better than decisions made by some goober on the other side of the ocean. I would suggest that issues about the "best interests of the child" are best understood by those who are closest to the child.

This is such a dumb argument it seems not worth answering. What dictors do is totally irrelevant, are you really denying that Jews don't perform circumcision for religious reasons? An Aztec removing a heart in a human sacrifice to the gods can't be a religious practice because a doctor sometimes does it too? I think you've lost the plot. Yeh, we change the law when we think we got it wrong. Circumcision is one such required law change. The goal posts are stuck were they started - special pleading. You are arguing that in the case of Jewish male circumcision, the right of freedom of choice for the parents to cut their baby son over-rides the rights of the baby not to be cut until he has the ability to consent.You extend that right to FGM which is an abhorrent practice. You respond that there are no absolutes, I tell you that of course there fucking are - if FGM isn't absolute enough for you how about shooting your neighbour in the head for fun? Does my right to have fun override my neighbour's right to life?There is quite obviously an absolute. Or maybe you think shooting people in the head is OK too?

Are you claiming that doctors perform circumcisions for religious reasons? If they don't, then it is not a religious issue. It really is that simple.Are you aiming to ban only religious circumcisions? Talk about doubling the height of the religious freedom barrier. Doctors don't remove hearts; they sometimes replace them. Don't confuse "we" with "you". No. I'm arguing that in the case of circumcision in general the parents have the right and responsibility to make decisions for their children, who can not. I am not discriminating either for or against Jews. Nothing I have said would change if there were no such thing as Jews. Nothing I have said would change if there was no such thing as religion. There go the goalposts again. There quite obviously isn't. You can't equivocate deliberate murder with a relatively minor procedure that the child is unlikely to remember. There's a continuum of "harm" from none at all up to murder. It's ridiculous to pretend that you can assign an absolute value to every point on the scale.

No, I'm claiming that what doctors do is irrelevant. Now answer my question - are Jews circumcised for religious reasons? You have this shitty habit of pretending to be really stupid. And if you continue, I'm going to change my mind about prendindig.I am indeed arguing that religious based circumcision of children below the age of consent should be banned. This is perhaps the 40th time I've said it. i've faulted on my self-imposed ban of relentless repetition several times now. I know your tactic is to never, ever give up no matter how stupid and repetetive it becomes, but you know, some of us prefer scratching our arses to feeding a troll. And who do they get to remove the hearts they replace them with, trolls? Aztecs? There you go avoiding answering again. You can't answer can you? And yet you just did. You think deliberate murder is wrong. Fine, we agree. The bible agrees. Society agrees. All societies agree. So there *is* an absolute. Now I think that FGM is also an absolute and so do all modern Western democracies but you don't - you think it's fine. You're on the wrong side of history.

It's as broad as the statement to which I was replying

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The legal weight is on the side of the parents

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It works just fine. You earlier argued that majority opinion is significant and meaningful when it comes to this discussion. Then you argued that majority opinion is oppressive in the context of this discussion. Some of them have been cultural practices in general western culture. Until they were prohibited. And if they weren't prohibited, immigrants from cultures where they are practiced may continue to practice them unhindered.