Things have been dormant for a bit, but I'm still here. I'm contemplating. While that's bad for output, at least in the short-term, it's good for my mental health. Mostly I'm thinking of how to do what I do here more effectively. I'll be back soon.
I compared infant male circumcision to tattooing a child based on a recent example from California. My original analysis translates to this story:
A Floyd County man has been charged with child cruelty after authorities say he tattooed his 3-year-old son.
Floyd County Police Sgt. Teri Davis said Eugene Ashley, 24, tattooed the back of his son’s right shoulder with “DB,” which stands for “Daddy’s Boy,” sometime this spring. The man told police he was intoxicated at the time, Davis said.
...The children remain with their mother; Eugene Ashley was arrested May 21 and faces charges of child cruelty and tattooing a person younger than 18 years old, the latter being a misdemeanor, Davis said.
Like father, like son. Right? Or is there some limit to parental consent and imposition? Again, both a tattoo and a circumcision are a permanent mark on the child's body without the child's consent. There is justifiably a law against tattooing, but there are more dangerous risks - bleeding, infection, amputation, death - involved in circumcision, an unnecessary surgical procedure. This is a double standard with no justifiable defense.
As I wrote in my initial entry:
None of these possible exemptions satisfies the primary ethical flaw in either violation. The act is forced upon the child without his consent. Necessity requires an acceptance of limited proxy parental consent for infant male circumcision that does not exist for tattooing because the probability of a medical need for circumcision is not equal to zero. But when the surgery is unnecessary to the child's health, circumcision is the same violation, a permanent change to the child's body without his consent. The disparity in protecting the rights of children is obvious and inexcusable.
For a few opinions on this story, read through the mind-numbing comments at Momania, Theresa Walsh Giarrusso's blog hosted at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Is it informed to have an opinion no deeper than "what we do is good, what we don't do is bad"?
Cato @ Liberty links to a legislative proposal that wouldn't be necessary in a reasonable world:
H.R. 2464, introduced yesterday, would prohibit the Transportation Security Administration from giving advance notice to security screeners when they are going to be covertly tested.
Does it need saying that tipping off screeners undermines the value of testing? Does TSA need a law to make it not do that?
I already had a low opinion of TSA, so this is more palm-to-the-forehead than surprise. Still, this is ridiculous. Can anyone think of a reason other than pure institutional - TSA and Congressional - incompetence for why the TSA situation is this way?
Police say 26-year-old Enrique Gonzalez held the boy while another gang member tattooed his right hip. ...
Gonzalez has been booked into the Fresno County Jail on suspicion of child abuse, mayhem, false imprisonment and a host of crimes with gang enhancements.
The (alleged) actions of the father are wrong, a conclusion virtually everyone will agree upon. Society is correct in prosecuting this as child abuse.
Yet, society's laws also allege that parents have an unquestionable right to circumcise their (male) children - a permanent change to the child's body - based only on a parental conclusion that some social benefit might exist for the child. We are not to judge those family decisions (on boys only, remember) made for subjective reasons.
Joel Stein satirized this mentality in a recent issue of Time when he wrote that "circumcision is something the U.S. does and Europe doesn't and is therefore awesome." Stein used this as a tongue-in-cheek way to introduce his skepticism on the issue. It wasn't funny because he recognized the violation of circumcision and still forced it on his son, but the attempt at humor was obvious. Someone like Dr. Edgar Schoen uses this same faux-patriotism in his books as an excuse to continue parental choice on infant male circumcision for social reasons without noticing the absurdity of this forced inclusion. The law sides with Schoen's stupidity on infant male¹ circumcision, which raises the question: How is tattooing a child any different than forcing unnecessary surgery on him?
The law permits parents to have no reason, but "like father, like son" is among the non-medical excuses most commonly provided. The medical community pushes this and few question it. Presumably the child in the news story above would've experienced greater acceptance and status among his father's peer group² by having the tattoo. Why is one ethical framework applicable in one scenario and inapplicable in an analogous scenario, if not to cherry-pick for outcome? Because one violation is uncommon and the other is practiced more than one million times each year? Because one leaves a mark accepted by most while the other leaves a mark shunned by most? I'm curious to know because the answer isn't logical.
None of these possible exemptions satisfies the primary ethical flaw in either violation. The act is forced upon the child without his consent. Necessity requires an acceptance of limited proxy parental consent for infant male circumcision that does not exist for tattooing because the probability of a medical need for circumcision is not equal to zero. But when the surgery is unnecessary to the child's health, circumcision is the same violation, a permanent change to the child's body without his consent. The disparity in protecting the rights of children is obvious and inexcusable.
¹ The law explicitly forbids this nonsense for female genital cutting, which is informative and worth exploring until the law changes. But it is beyond the scope necessary for this blog entry.
² It's also possible to make a reasonable comparison here to the locker room theory used to justify circumcising male children.
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