There are health reasons for male circumcision says the CDC.
In response to my piece on tail docking and the limits of coercion (i.e why the proper response to differing opinions in the world of dogs is not always to pass a new law), a sensible person wrote in to say that he thought male circumcision was different than tattoos and breast augmentation, because the baby could not decide.
Right.
On the surface entirely logical. But let's think things through for a second or two more....
A baby cannot consent to vaccines either, but we go ahead with that, don't we? And thank God!
The assumption is that circumcision is purely an archaic historical convention, the same as tail docking, and that neither have any real health benefit. The assumption also seems to be that a little nip is horribly painful and/or or reduces function.
But, of course, neither statement is true for male human circumcision OR tail docking in working dog breeds.
Read that last line. Neither stament is true. There are real reasons to dock tails in certain working dog breeds, and there are real reasons to circumcise male babies, and neither practice is massively painful or debilitating in the slightest.
This last statement, about circumcision, seems to be new information to some, but the U.S. Center for Disease Control is quite clear on the matter.
And to underscore, the health benefits for circumcision are are not just for men; they are for women and babies too.
Notes The Washington Post:
In addition to reducing the risk for urinary tract infections among infants, studies indicate that circumcision cuts the chances of adult men's getting penile cancer and becoming infected with a variety of sexually transmitted diseases, including syphilis, AIDS, herpes and the human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes genital warts in men and women and cervical cancer in women.
Wow!
Women. Men. Infants. Young adults. Old people.
Everyone seems to benefit when young male babies are circumcised.
So does that mean we should force parents to circumcise their children under penalty of law?
Not in my book. But then, I am a "let freedom ring" kind of guy, and that holds true for circumcision as well as tail docking.
Pardon the pun, but "different strokes for different folks."
Some things simply do not require one-size-fits-all legislation.
I am happy to educate rather than legislate; to persuade rather than coerce.
I do not require you to give up your religion in order to follow mine, nor do I mandate that you hunt your dog if you do not want to hunt.
I am a liberal that way.
Just because I am not gay does not mean I support a ban on gay marriage. And, to carry the analogy forward, if I were gay I would not require straights to stand at the back of the bus, nor would I deny them their health insurance benefits.
I am a liberal that way.
I support the Second Amendment, but I do not require that you own a gun (I do not own one myself), not do I require you to support my interpretation of the U.S. Constitution even though it is shared by both the Obama Administration and the U.S. Supreme Court.
I am a liberal that way.
I eat meat, but I am not opposed to you being a vegetarian. Conversely, if you are a pure Atkins-diet meat-eater, I trust you will not be lecturing me if I happen to choose to eat a salad or scarf down a potato for lunch.
Of course not everyone can live in their own skin without dictating what is on your skin.
And I mean that quite literally.
Of the population aged 26-40, 40 percent have tattoos.
I do not have a tattoo, but let me say that if the number of tattoo'd people climbs above 50 percent, I hope those with tattoos will not require the rest of us to get one! . Let freedom ring!
A little over 60% of U.S. men are circumcised. Let me affirmatively say that just because the majority of American men are circumcised, I do not think we need to jail those who are not. I do not even think we need to beat them up. . Let freedom ring!
It seems that of the population aged 26-40, 24 percent dye their hair "an untraditional color" not found in nature, while 22 percent have "a piercing other than an earlobe."
Yow! Freaks and geeks. No worries. Let it be said that when I become Emperor, I will not raise taxes on people with purple hair or or toss those with tongue or eyebrow piercings into jail. Let freedom ring!
And let it be said that I generally think well of women despite the fact that 91 percent of the more than 11.6 million cosmetic surgical and nonsurgical procedures performed in this country last year were done on women. That number includes 400,000 breast augmentations, 153,000 breast reductions, 2.7 million botox injections, and 185,000 tummy tucks.
No one in my family had any of that stuff done, but I am affirmatively opposed to rounding up and imprisoning the girls at Hooters who got boob jobs, or the old ladies at the Country Club who got face lifts. . Let freedom ring!
Of course, not everyone supports letting freedom ring.
The British seem to love creeping fascism.
They not only banned fox hunting and most guns, but they also banned pit bulls and the tail-cropping of both terriers and certain breeds of gun dogs. And, of course, they did all of this for a perfectly good holier-than-thou reason (and never mind the health evidence); it seems all the other problems in the U.K. had already been solved! The nannies could not leave well enough alone. Never mind that the nannies were always free to excericse their own preferences; they had to step in and decide your preferences as well!
Thank God America is not controlled by the British!
Lovely people (some of my best friends, etc.), but I would not want to be governed by one.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had the right idea.
And need I say that all three of our Founding Fathers were Virginians? True!
We not only have the right to own a gun this State, but we also have the Constitutional right to hunt and fish, and yes we can also choose to dock a terrier's tale (or choose not to) and we can also circumsize our sons (or choose not to).
Let freedom ring!
There are health reasons to dock the tails on certain breeds of working dogs.
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