As some may know, there's a whole furor in San Francisco over penises. This may seem unsurprising given that it is San Francisco, except that in this case the furor is over circumcision. A man named Hess has been advocating banning circumcision of men, which is opposed by both Jews and Muslims in the city. As well it should be, for such a ban is a
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I'll agree that the comic is obviously anti-Semitic. This does not mean the ban is. To quote Eugene Volokh, "As best I can tell, opponents of male circumcision believe that it’s a serious interference with the rights of boys, and the men they’ll become, and a serious harm to those boys and men. If that’s so, then there’s every reason for them to think that it’s just as much an interference with rights, and just as much of a harm, when the conduct is done for religious reasons. And therefore it makes perfect sense that, with no hostility to the religion as such, the backers would refuse to include a religious exemption. The refusal to give people a religious exemption from a ban on behavior that you think is harmful and rights-violating hardly shows a hostility to religion - it shows a hostility to the behavior, whether the behavior is religious or otherwise." (Emphasis mine)
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I disagree that the ban is not anti-Semitic, given that the guy behind the comic is the one who advocated for the ban in the first place.
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Again, not the question. Whether it should or should not be legalized, the question is whether it would be immoral solely because we do not provide a religious exemption. Whether it's immoral for other reasons isn't the question - it's whether barring any religious ritual, even an arguably inhumane one, is immoral solely because it lacks the exception. For a more relevant example: is the ban on religious sacrifice of animals immoral because we don't have an exception for voodoun practitioners? That's arguably an inherently problematic behavior - is it immoral to bar it without a religious exception, though?
As for whether it's anti-Semitic or not... well, we can't ascribe the intent of the one guy to all of the people who vote for it.
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But just the same as this proposal has its anti-Semitic elements, they have their homophobic elements, and they're fairly strong.
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Since when????
Seriously, that's realpoltics. If you don't vote for a tax increase to build schools you hate children. If you voted for prop 186 (in Calif) you are a raceist and a bigot. etc etc.
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The fact he's obviously been broken for a long time, doesn't implicate others in the rest of his beliefs. I rather wish he didn't agree with me on this, because I don't want to be tarred with his brush.
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Either there is a problem with performing circumcisions on infants, or there isn't.
So making an exception for a particular religion from my perspective is total bullshit. It doesn't make any sense.
To illustrate reductio ad absurdum, you wouldn't make an exemption for a modern day Aztec religious practitioners to perform human sacrifice under the aegis of religious freedom. Because if act X is wrong, it's still wrong regardless of the religious context.
Personally I'm kind of on the fence. I'm not totally opposed, but I personally find it an unreasonable practice and I can understand why some people wholeheartedly reject it as immoral. If it was a new phenomenon rather than a long standing religious or social tradition and someone started suggesting it as new fangled health treatment for babies, I think it would dismissed instantly as obviously wrong.
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