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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That or become a legitimate news source.
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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 ( ... )
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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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*sigh*
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I kind of take a blunt edge to this subject. I don't factor anyone's religion imaginary friends into it.
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