Andrew Sullivan opposes a San Francisco ballot initiative that would ban male circumcision, in the process referring to it as “mutilation.”
It seems dumb to me that there isn’t a religious exception. Practically and constitutionally, you can protect the religious right of Muslims and Jews to mutilate their infant children, while reducing the number of mutilated infants overall. I know it doesn’t make total sense, but religious practices, even when inflicting pain on the helpless, do seem to me to fall within constitutional protection – and rightly so.
This does a disservice to the word “mutilation.” The use of the word “mutilation” in this context evokes an implicit comparison between the ritual removal of the foreskin and the kind of female genital cutting that often involves completely excising women’s external genitalia. Actual genital mutilation throughout the world causes prolonged pain and often difficulty with giving birth, sexual intercourse, and even simply going to the bathroom. The two rituals are very different, not just in a physical sense but given the level of permanent, unalterable control the latter seeks over women’s sexuality. The only possible parallel here is that children can’t consent, but you might as well compare being made to eat your broccoli or being sent to your room with being forced to consume rat poison. Male circumcision performed by Jews is more comparable to families who have their daughters’ ears pierced shortly after birth, which I can’t really imagine people mobilizing to protest.
