I'm not a circumcision fan, not as a Jew, not as a man. I belong to a branch of Judaism — Reconstructionist — that considers itself enlightened and progressive; no "Chosen People" stuff, no rules about matrilineal descent, and yet, thanks to the apparently intractable belief that humankind's covenant with God somehow specifically demands that each and every Jewish male must suffer ritual genital mutilation, Reconstructionists still insist upon the practice.

Ritual. Genital. Mutilation. That's precisely what circumcision is, and it is performed for no other reason than virgins were sacrificed to King Kong. The "health" reasons put forth on behalf of such routine disfigurement are unproved, including the belief, prevalent in the 19th-century U.S., that removing a foreskin would cut down on masturbation. As for the ethical and moral issues involved in performing elective surgery on a newborn — a situation where informed consent by the patient is an impossibility — well, hey, a covenant's a covenant. With the Lord!

What particularly galls me is the mealy-mouthed dishonesty practiced by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which oh-so-carefully crawls a tightrope spun of silken shite:

"New scientific evidence shows the health benefits of newborn male circumcision outweigh the risks of the procedure, but the benefits are not great enough to recommend routine circumcision for all newborn boys."

The procedure? Ritual genital mutilation. Yes, I have a son, and when he was born, I hired a mohel to cut him. What a dolt I was. An ignorant fundamentalist, nothing more. My wife, born and raised Catholic, had to quash the urge to seize the boy and vanish into the woods behind our house before the mohel began. I wish she had.

THE ROYAL CIRCUMCISION: Tom Junod on the Tradition of Circumcision, Happy with My Foreskin by Chris Jones, Mike Sager on Circumcising His Son

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