Should Boys be Circumcised?

Since most sex occurs with a condom used the presence or absence of a foreskin is a no-effect
proposition.

Even when "used bare" there is so much more involved in having sex that the more important thing would be to have sufficient foreplay to provide enough natural lubrication or sdd supplemental lube!

Hal 84's arguments are fine for adults who want to consider improving on God's design for their OWN penis. Maybe Hal 84 can convince some of them to cut off their entire penis,not just the most nerve-dense part of it. No skin off my dick if they do. What is diabolically evil is to use these same arguments to support chopping up and amputating vital, healthy, normal, important parts of OTHER people's sex organs, especially those of BABIES who can't defend themselves.

So, Hal 84, which is it? Are you giving your "wisdom" to adults for their own analysis and benefit, should they choose to fall for your flawed arguments, or are you arguing to IMPOSE your "wisdom" on helpless babies for the rest of their lives, to circumcise BOYS. Remember, the question here is, "Should BOYS be Circumcised?" You list yourself on the YES side of the argument. Is that what you are saying?

If so, you are advocating human vivisection, which is the human rights violation and the crime against humanity that Nazi doctors were convicted at Nuremberg after World War II of committing against Jews and others during the war. You are inciting people to violate the law against human vivisection. This itself is a human rights violation, because you are advocating denying the male half of the population equal protection of the law with females. Here is the relevant passage from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which has been law in this country since it was ratified by the US on December 10, 1948.

Article 7
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration AND AGAINST ANY INCITEMENT TO SUCH DISCRIMINATION.

You have freedom of speech, but not ABSOLUTE freedom of speech. You do not have the right to shout "FIRE!" in a crowded theater where there is no fire, for example. You also have no right to incite discrimination against ANYONE by denying them equal protection of the law, let alone half of the human population.

Unless of course you are also advocating circumcision of girls. Then you aren't advocating illegal discrimination, just human vivisection for everyone.

In either case, you are way off base.

Chop up your own penis all you like. Grind up the whole thing and feed it to wolves if you like. Fine. I have no problem with that. It's people chopping up OTHER people's penises that I have a serious problem with. Doing so is sick. Advocating doing so is sick. Sick, sick, sick. Disgusting. Evil.

Livvy says, "If you really believe that executives of the hospital would peddle circumcision as a means for extra income...well... the numbers don't really add up, do they?"

You asked the question, Livvy. Let's see if we can find the answer.

I called my local non-profit hospital to ask how much they would charge me and my wife for the use of their circumcision room if we decided to have our son circumcised. They told me $1,450. To use the room for 15 to 30 minutes. I nearly passed out. So I called the for-profit hospital: $4,420.

I'm not making this up.

Could $2,900 to $17,680 per hour to use a small room in the hospital motivate hospital executives?

And what about the circumcisers themselves? Could money possibly motivate them?

A friend just got back from an OB/GYN conference. Here's a sentence from his extensive report:

"I learned of the lead Georgia researcher's two friends; a pair of young residents each doing 5-6 infant circumcisions per day for about $200k per year "extra" money."

Let's look at that math a little more carefully for a moment. Assume 6 genital mutilations/day x 5 days/week x 50 weeks/year = 1,500 unasked for genital mutilations per year. $200,000 / 1,500 mutilations = $133.33 per criminal assault. That's about what you said, Livvy, at $150 each, a little less. Maybe residents have to work a little harder for their blood money? 6 x 15 minutes = 1.5 hours. 6 x 30 minutes = 3 hours. Would you work 1.5 to 3 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 50 weeks, for $200,000? I would, if it didn't involved violating the human rights and injuring unnecessarily and recklessly endangering the lives of babies and children .

At 5 mutilations/day it's 1,250 mutilations per year. $200,000 / 1,250 = $160 per mutilation.

Either way, it sounds like we're in the right ball park, doesn't it?

Would 200,000 EXTRA dollars per year motivate anyone? Might help pay off that $150,000+ student loan pretty quick, huh? Nine months of mutilations and it's done. Well, maybe another month for the interest on the loan, if any. Then, for the rest of your work life, it's all gravy.

Listen to Thomas Wiswell, infamous circumciser, on the subject: "I have some good friends who are obstetricians outside the military, and they look at a foreskin and almost see a $125 price tag on it. Each one is that much money. Heck, if you do 10 a week, that's over $1,000 a week, and they don't take that much time."

- Dr.Thomas Wiswell,
quoted in "The Age-Old Question of Circumcision"
by Betsy A. Lehman, Boston Globe, June 22, 1987, p. 43

Could this be part of the reason circumcisers have such disdain for human rights? Human rights, taken seriously, would cost some circumcisers hundreds of thousands of dollars EVERY YEAR.

I intend to get the human rights of the babies and children taken seriously by our brutal, ignorant, child-mutilating medical profession and society . Could this be why I've been so popular with circumcisers for the last forty years?

Certain types of surgery are unnecessary for a lot of people ie: they are not life saving operations.

Sorry that you had such a high IQ that you were priveledged enough to enter medical school (if that is the case).Wish I had been as lucky!

No one holds the gun to your head to be anything , doctor dentist etc so please spare me the sob story. I have friends who also sacrificed years of life for their careers and they don't complain.

Universities are publicly funded institutions. Without the millions of people in all types of jobs to pay tax , there would be no doctors, dentists , lawers etc.

On the other hand , and, having needed surgery myself, I can appreciate the value of good surgery. In my case it removed cancer . I am in a paid health fund and have also gone into debt to fund it as I had to leave work to care full time for my mother who is 89. I too have had to go without and, my best wage in the time I worked was around $40,000 per year.
I have invested time in learning how to use what resourses I have to the best advantage, and I get no hand out from anyone.

I absolutely believe in the value of good health and good medical advice. I was simply saying that circumcision is , in most cases unnecessary. Sorry If I offended anyone or any doctors.

In fact, no procedure in the history of medicine has been claimed to cure and prevent more diseases than circumcision.Circumcisers will always invent new claims, today it is HIV and tomorrow it will be something else.

Racism also played a role. one campaign sought to circumcise blacks to prevent the rape of white women(7) It was also believe that Jews were immune to masturbation and all the subsequent diseases that it was believed to cause.(4)

Here is some more of DR. Kellogg “work”:

"A remedy which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision,[…]. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutaryeffect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment, as it may well be in some cases. [...] The soreness which continues for several weeks interrupts the practice, and if it had not previously become too firmly fixed, it may be forgotten and not resumed."(5)

"In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid [phenol] to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement."(5)

He also recommended tying children’s hands, covering their genitals with patented cages, sewing the foreskinshut and electrical shock.(5)

By cutting of the male and female parts that play a self stimulating role it was believed it would stop masturbation and all the diseases masturbation was believed to cause.

If a Jew was circumcised in a hospital as many are today: do you think they should be denied the right to a religious circumcision? A consenting adult who has reviewed their faith could make this decision on their own giving both religious freedom or the freedom to genital intactness for the individual. Would it not be better to discourage non consenting infant circumcision in a non religious hospital setting?

Further more some research I have come across seems to question the tradition of circumcision as a tenant of Judaism.
Most people assume that circumcision has always been a part of Jewish life. In Genesis 17, we read that the Lord appeared to Abraham when he was ninety-nine years old and made a covenant with him, agreeing that he would be the God of the Jews and the Jews would worship no other god but him. To Seal the bargain. Jehovah is reported to have said to Abraham:

“For Your part, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after your, generation by generation. This is how you shall keep my covenant between myself and your descendants after you: circumcise yourselves every male among you. You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be the sign of the covenant between us. Every male among you in every generation shall be circumcised on the eighth day, both those born in your house and any foreigner, not of your blood but bought with your money. Circumcise both those born in your house ans bought with your money.”(genesis 17:9-19)

Biblical scholars, however, have known for a long time that this passage was never in the original Bible. It was added about 500 B.C., over one thousand years after the time of Abraham. Scholars David Rosenberg and Harold Bloom have published a full translation of the original version of Genesis, which dates from about 950 B.C. Here, Chapter 17 is conspicuously absent. All we read is that

“it was that day Yahweh cut a covenant with Abram:”I gave this land to your seed, from the river of Egypt to the great river, Euphrates—of the Kenite, and Kenizzite, the Kadmonite; of Hittite, the Perizzite, the Rephaim; of the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Girashite, the Jubisite(23)”

As you can see, there is no mention of circumcision as a sign of this bargain. Along with biblical scholars, the only conclusion is that circumcision was never originally part of Judaism. Why, then, was circumcision incorporated into priestly Judaism?
Rabbi and historian Lawrence A. Hoffman explains that by the late fifth century B.C., at the time of the Jews from Babylonian captivity, the priest hood tried to confirm their status as the dominant political force among the Israelites. (24) they did this by instituting a temple-centerd sacrificial cult into which newborn males were initiated by circumcision. They created the Abrahamic circumcision myth and inserted it into the most important part of Genesis, pretending that it had been there all along. The priesthood maintained their grip on power until about A.D. 71, when they were overthrown. Circumcision has remained a Hebrew practice ever since.

23. Rosenberg D, Bloom H (trans and eds). The Book of J. New York: Grove Weidenfeld;1990. p.79.
24.Hoffman LA. Covenant of Blood: Circumcision and Gender in Rabbinic Judaism. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press; 1996.

As a Jew who has looked this up I can tell you too. It appears that circumcision was commonly practiced as a fertility rite among some groups, and as a priestly rite among the Egyptians. It would appear that the Hebrews inherited it from the Egyptians, or simply practiced it as fertility magic.

Later, the Rabbis cleverly added some passages making it more important and central for the Jews. This was the Covenant of Circumcision which replaced the Land Covenant - that the "landlord" defaulted on. See "Covenant of Blood" by Lawrence Hoffman.

Circumcision functions in Judaism to elevate men, - at the direct expense of women. It truly makes they 2nd class. It also functions to make men sexually blind, crippled if you will, and allows them to ejaculate quickly and be done with "it".

Circumcision is sexual theft.