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 ( ... )
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Christian countries have bad histories with laws like this, and not exempting religion is well....problematic. It may seem unjust and stupid, but so were the anti-Semitic laws that targeted Jews for this in the first place.
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As for the question of it as ongoing tradition of a ethnic group that has been wrong done by, that in itself makes me sympathetic and why I'm little inclined to stay on the fence, but as an argument, it takes the form of "Two Wrongs = A Right".
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If they backed that up with credible evidence, I'd be more willing to believe their sincerity. Frankly, having been one of those poor little circumcised infants (though not for religious reasons), unnumbered are the ways in which my lack of a foreskin has not interfered with the man I've become, and I can't think of a single way it has, to say nothing of the alleged "harm."
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She sort of sounds like the one I not so fondly refer to as my Psycho Ex From Indiana....
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And the inhaler - apparently if you get an erection within like two or three weeks, things will tear, and life rapidly becomes unpleasant. So you carry this inhaler that's basically anti-Viagra around with you. Not cool.
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Maybe the ban had anti-semitic beginnings. Obviously, I think that is wrong. However, I do think a circumcision ban is a good thing, since it's a choice a man should be allowed to make when he's old enough to decide for himself.
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