Fair enough. A better example is the law which forbids the wearing of any “ostentatious” religious articles in schools, in a population where the only people (generally) who actually wear “ostentatious” articles are minorities such as Sikhs, Jews and (most notably) Muslim women - that is, minorities.
The law is perfectly neutral on its face, but its application is very clearly not - it is aimed and motivated, for better or worse, at Muslim women wearing headscarves.
Such laws are like, in the words of an old comedian, the law which very even-handedly prohibits both rich and poor alike from sleeping in public parks.
Now, one could come up with all sorts of arguments as to why such a ban is necessary and those are perfectly debatable. What is not in question, though, is the fact that a clever person can very easily draft laws or apply existing ones in ways that appear to treat the majority and minority the same, but actually have a differential effect on the minority.
To my mind, part of the value of a constitutional democracy is to avoid having the majority enforce its cultural will on the minority using tricks like that. Otherwise, democracy tends to act like “three wolves and two sheep voting on what’s for dinner tonight”.
Remind me again. Which of those activities has a lasting physical effect on a non-consenting third party?
Tattooing is illegal in the UK for under 18’s. Ear Piercing? don’t think there is anything other a requirement for parental consent under the age of 16. However, since ear piercings are reversible and are hardly a sensitive area, (and so can sensibly be said to remain “intact”) perhaps genital and nipple piercings are a better equivalent? in which case no, they cannot be carried out on the under 18’s. Again, this is the UK. I don’t know about Germany but I know you have no problem attributing the laws and history of one European country to all of them.
The question you are dying to ask is whether I’d support legislation on the piercing of ears for those unable to consent. the answer is yes. I’d probably support it. Although I think in all tattooing and piercing cases the age of consent should be 16 or whatever the equivalent age of wider consent is.
That seems to be the level of misunderstanding you’e shown so far, What I am actually shocked at is that you seem to think there is a European “project” to exterminate the Jews. You must see how offensive that is to us? (By “us” I mean all Europeans that are against discrimination and prejudice of any kind)
these appear to be words and yet don’t seem to actually mean anything.
I disagree. Things should not be outlawed because somebody thinks they are “bad”. The onus is always on those who think something is so “bad” as to be outlawed to justify this. And the “badness” has to pass some sort of threshold of seriousness, otherwise the default should be to not interfere.
This is, for example, why I disagree with the law making pot smoking illegal. Not because pot smoking is good for you - despite what advocates say, it isn’t - but rather because it isn’t sufficiently bad to justify the state prohibiting it. Same, for example, with drinking alcohol. Although there are some health benefits claimed from drinking small amounts, overall it is bad for you, but not so bad as to justify criminalizing drinking it.
And I never asserted that the European fundamental law is an expression of conscious hatred for any of the minorities in question.
It is, rather, consistent with an attitude of protection from the threat of the other. Marcus’ example of banning ostentatious religious clothing is another perfect example of this habit. No pun intended.
Having sent some others here stomping off in an angry huff at my “racism” for remembering the long history of this fear of the other, it’s refreshing to discuss the law on its own terms with the more level-headed.
Yet I still have no answers on the European Fundamental Law’s strictures as regards the mutilation of minors in tattoo parlors and piercing pagodas.
Does anybody have an answer on this subject?
I think I read above that one or another of our number say that you can still practice Judaism, you simply cannot “mutilate” your male child. He can still do it when he’s older, of course, once he’s all grown up.
Trouble is, your only option as a Jew is to let him grow all the way up until the end of the eighth day after his birth. So the “delay” theory of Jewish law applies only to arguing that the child be permitted to take the whole of the eighth day to make his decision. I don’t think this will solve the challenge introduced by the delicate sensibilities of the Fundamental Law.
So no, you cannot practice Judaism in Europe under this law.
To extend the metaphor to Christian religion: If the law demands that a child choose a religion upon reaching adulthood, why does the Fundamental Law not insist that baptism be an adults-only activity? In what sense is the child “choosing” to be baptized into one or another Christian sect, with infant baptism?
We’ve established that there’s no compelling evidence that harm is done through male circumcision. The only arguments in favor of this ruling are rooted in majority culture and aesthetics, neither of which are powerful enough to trump the rights of the religious minorities most seriously affected.
Despite the fad-followers’ attempt to lump me into the “religious crowd,” I am not especially observant. I am, however, somewhat knowledgeable about the history of Europe. Anti-semitism has never been the only attitude on said continent, but it has been for many centuries the predominant one. I doubt seriously whether that attitude has been extinguished.
I also agree with you and with Marcus that said attitude can easily enough be enshrined in a basic law purported to balance majority rights with minority rights, the right to one’s free practice with the rights of children in your care, and the like.
This ruling reeks of the vestiges of historical anti-semitism – not active and conscious hate, merely disregard of the rights of religious minorities. This time, the cloak is “equality” for all; yet the law is at no great pains to keep Christian children from the clutches of the Church until their adulthood; to prevent non-religious “mutilation” of children (unless I am wrong on this point); or to otherwise offend the Christian sects or the purely secular individual on parallel points. (I’ll stipulate that less basic intrusions are included from the point of view of the observant Christian.)
It is not necessary that the drafters of this law, and the court so interpreting it, is born of hatred.
It is sufficient that the law seeks to regulate practices not shown to do harm, in a way that makes impossible the practice of Judaism and, I suspect, of Islam.
And yes, I do appreciate that a group of Christians and others of conscience in Europe sought to mitigate the damage done by the Nazis. The question is not whether each individual European, or German, is capable of seeing the wrongness of the default position. The question is what the default position to the “other” has been within Europe, and if present evidence is any indication, continues to be - just through different rationales.
No-one has stomped off. Some have been a little annoyed at being lumped in as conspirators in a Jewish extermination “project”
You have an answer but yet you have still to provide me with an answer to my question. I’ll ask it again in case it slipped your mind.
*You say you can’t trust the Germans on this issues…ever! because of their history. I asked you whether you extend this rationale to religions as well. i.e. when a religion has done something wrong in the past or hold view/take actions that we now find abhorrent, should we never trust them on associated issues in the future…ever? *
We don’t have to read the rule as a** literal **8 days. Like the creation of Earth in 7 days, we can use that figuratively, and say that the “8 days after birth” refers to the “eight stages of human development before reaching adulthood” or something like that. Problem solved.
I’m a “cultural jew” who was circumcised at birth. I’m very pleased with my penis the way it is. However, I must say the German court got it right. We don’t have the right to do this to our children because of what “we” want. It’s simply not our decision.
Genital mutilation of babies meets all those tests. Easily.
So now you’re in a position of arguing that cutting off part of the genitals of a baby isn’t “sufficiently” bad. I guess it’s because it still allows for sexual function. But we could cut off parts of baby’s ears, or noses, or toes and make that claim too - it’s not that bad because they don’t really need it. So do you want to make that legal too?
I think mutilation of children trumps religious rights. Men don’t need nipples, so if we sliced off the nipples of male children, that would be ok as long as a religion requires it?
No. I do not wish to repeat what I’ve said upthread, but the medical science, which I have posted links to upthread (and which you are welcome to read), holds that there are many medical benefits to circumcision (as well as some drawbacks). There are no medical benefits to the procedures you claim.
On a cost/benefit analysis, it isn’t at all clear that the procedure is a net negative. Indeed, according to some scientists, it may be a net health positive. Under those circumstances, it is simply unreasonable to state that it crosses the threshold of things which are sufficiently bad for anyone that they should be outlawed.
I don’t think one can make a case on the science for the benefits of cutting off noses, ears or toes.
Do you not also agree that there are limits of the equivalencies that can be drawn between protecting children and allowing adults to make legal choices for themselves? Such as - does your support for legalising pot stretch to allowing parents to give blowbacks to their infant children? Can parents give their kids any amount of perfectly legal alcohol or cigarettes? Or should it be, rightly IMHO, that the law requires one to be of a specific age in order to partake of specific things, whether potentially harmful to you or not? Is it not to be simply understood that this decision is based on the ability of the child to offer consent to an unnecessary (and irreversible) process?
You are asking a lot of unrelated questions. My post was in response to the analogy as to why we should legally differentiate between pot and heroin, not to assert that pot smoking by children was acceptable.
Certainly, and again as I have stated upthread, I believe that individual freedom has rational limits, and the freedom of parents to raise their children (which of necessity entails making decisions on the child’s behalf) has limits as well.
Those limits ought, in a perfect world, to be based on science and not cultural prejudice or instictive revulsion at the wrongness of the choices made by others. They should be based on a rational, cost/benefit analysis of the actual benefits and drawbacks of the activity contemplated, and only where the activity is clearly and bady harmful should the state intervene, no matter how “unnecessary” and “irreversable” the activity is. Pretty well all actions undertaken in regards to infants are “irreversable” because you don’t get to re-live childhood, and “unnecessary” is a value judgment (and in this case a false one).
Now, as to your specific questions - in my opinion whether or not the activity of giving recreational drugs to children ought to be illegal depends on the addictive potential of the drug is question and the amount or frequency. It is not unusual, for example, for children in some cultures to be offered small amounts of wine, and I don’t think (again depending on the science of addiction) that this ought to be illegal; OTOH, cigarettes are so addictive that any amount of smoking of them by children should be prohibited.
What I dislike, is reasoning by appeals to emotion or rhetoric, particularly to demonize the activities of the minority. When the argument has to rely on ‘so you like mutilation of children on the orders of some sky fairy, right?’, that sort of thing.
I agree, but my point in bringing it up is that this is an example of a law that is rigourously even-handed in its drafting, but not at all in practice. Most “ethnically French” children (if that is the correct term - I mean here the children of the majority culture in France) do not wear “ostentatious” religious symbols in the first place, so a law outlawing the same has no effect on them.
For one, what you perhaps do not appreciate is that what we are discussing is really a cultural practice.
For example, circumcision is a mark of Judaism, and Judaism is better thought of as a tribal identity than simply a religion (there are many, many atheist Jews who still consider themselves fully Jewish and follow Jewish practices, such as circumcision). A Jew may have no belief whatsoever in any “sky fairy” and still wish to be a member of the Jewish people.
For another example, millions of people circumcise their children without any religious or cultural motives whatsoever - see the situation in North America.
So we could be having this discussion, “sky faries” or not.
But that is besides the point. It is quite irrelevant what motivates parents to make decisions on behalf of their kids - what is significant is whether this leads to actual harmful behaviour. It is ass-backwards to reason that because a decision is made for reasons of which you do not approve, therefore it must be harmful. Adding well-poisioning gratuitous insults to the religious just makes it obvious that the real motive in banning the practice is the dislike of religion, not a level-headed and objective analysis of benefits and harms.
I have not heard of a Jewish community that interprets the law on eighth day circumcision to mean “eight days but ‘day’ does not mean what you think it does, it means whatever you want it to mean.”
No, it’s a European court’s decision.
I could understand this tack if there were a clear-cut case that there’s any harm done by male infant circumcision. I’ve seen nothing here – or elsewhere – that supports that conclusion.
We can all (not you, others here) have a great time saying “mutilating babies” rather than “circumcision.” Bully. Color me shocked.
It does not change the fact that there’s no compelling state interest in intervening in this Jewish, and Muslim – but notably, not Christian – practice.
these appear to be words and yet don’t seem to actually mean anything.