They seek love and spiritual affection. I see no mention of the word “sex” in that excerpt.
I cannot read the mind of each mohel and neither can you. You can say the whole thing is not an elaborate roundabout way of a man sexually mouthing a baby dick, I can say who knows if it is or cares because either way it’s sick and wrong, and we can go around and around.
If I were to make a list of “Times When It’s Appropriate for an Adult to Make Mouth Contact with Infant Genitalia,” there would only be “To save a life” on it. No mention of “we’ve always done it that way,” no mention of “god said to,” no mention of “tradition.” All of those go, together, on the other list, “Random Crap People Say When They Try to Explain Why Their Mouth Contact with Infant Genitalia is Appropriate.” Trying to determine exactly why a particular adult put his or her mouth upon the genitalia of a particular infant is unnecessary.
If you think only sexually motivated contact is prohibited, what of the other examples I have asked about? A lost bet, cleaning, etc. – by this reasoning, all are okay, yet clearly they aren’t, are they?
Why go down the road of arguing and challenging religious zealots on why they should stop practicing what they’ve been practicing for generations (by pointing out it’s creepy and icky), when you can easily win the argument and get them to knock that shit off by pointing out it’s a medically and scientifically unsound practice and if they insist on continuing to do it, they’ll be arrested and charged with child endangerment.
They aren’t going to be convinced by reason, no matter what the reasons are. But they are in the minority, so if their icky practice becomes well-known enough, they will be stomped out by the majority.
Think of it this way: nearly everyone opposes men sucking baby penises, but there is a hefty contingent that doesn’t give a rat’s ass about whether their habits and beliefs are backed up by sound science or medicine.
Even anti-vaxxers are rarely pro-baby-dick-sucking.
Then why does your argument seemingly depend on the salacious characterization?
Your new defense appears to be that it doesn’t matter whether you ascribe incorrect sexual motives to the practice because no defense of the practice is compelling.
But a moment’s thought should make clear that the two errors are unrelated. What prevents you from attacking the practice with accurate critiques, and responding to any defenses with accurate rebuttals?
No one participating in this thread has called the practice “OK.” Obviously the Orthodox Jews in question believe the practice to be in accord with the command of God. I don’t share that view, not being an Orthodox Jew, or indeed a Jew at all. So my defense of the practice, such as it is, is limited to pointing out, patiently, that the practice is not sexual. Lost bets and cleaning would not be sexual either, yet they would be wrong. The problem with those examples is that they manifest clear indicia of pretext. It’s not remotely believable to imagine cleaning or a lost bet as actual reasons for oral-genital contact, so the immediate assumption is that such an excuse is a pretext for sexual desires. Here, in contrast, that inference does not hold, and that’s my criticism of your arguments: you try to make the practice sound sexual.
You cannot avoid that criticism by now saying that because it’s sick and wrong, it’s perfectly justified to imply that it’s also sexual. It’s not.
If only. The more absurd, irrational, medieval, superstitious, and harmful the practice, the more stoutly religious zealots will defend it. The more they see themselves as under attack, the more fiercely they’ll fight back. And it doesn’t matter what denomination it is.
As I’ve come to be convinced in this thread, if you make it an issue of salacious ridicule of archaic religious practice, there will be a line of lawyers (and case law) willing to defend them based on religious rights and freedoms.
Clearly we can’t. If you go back to the beginning of the thread, the OP was upset that the orthodox shitheads were ignoring the medical and scientific advice that suggested there are better methods of cleaning the circumcision wound than with one’s mouth. And then Bricker got a bug up his butt about colloquial descriptions of ‘oral suction of the genitals’ and 3 pages later here we are.
My argument does not depend on any one thing. It’s gross and wrong and dangerous and skeevy at every turn, no matter how you frame it, no matter what you call it, no matter who is doing it, no matter what reasons they give, no matter what time of day, no matter who’s watching, in a box, with a fox, in a house, with a mouse, etc.
There is no need for a “critique” of the practice, as it has literally nothing going for it. The only reason anyone other than those practicing it even half-thinks it’s maybe okay is because of weak language that obfuscates what is really going on, or because they think sucking a baby’s penis is underrated.
There is nothing unbelievable about anyone doing anything idiotic, because there are so many people nothing is too stupid to happen and eventually will, so I don’t think someone “nonsexually” mouthing a baby penis qualifies as too absurd to contemplate. People have made bets that result in easily-predicted death, so why is this too far-fetched to even contemplate?
I’m not “trying” to make the practice “sound sexual.” The practice does that for me, since a penis is a sex organ.
He’s not wrong. There are pretty extensive laws on the books about what constitutes pedophelia. As far as I know, none of these guys are being dragged into court for fellating babies. Is it because the courts choose to look the other way for this specific case of sexual child abuse? Or is it because the courts don’t view this as such?
And another line willing to help with the stomping. Religious “rights” and “freedoms” get stomped out from time to time, and this one seems like a no-brainier as far as popular support goes, so I say, let the games begin!
Or is it to avoid being accused of anti-Semitism?
It’s also how you take a piss. Just saying.
If only the legal system was as intimidated by my ethnic background as you insinuate. Oh the shit I’d try to get away with. 
I’m not insinuating anything like that. But obviously some religions are scorned more than others, in spite of no real differences in their levels of absurdity. How do you explain that?
Yes, but a couple extra shakes at the urinal and suddenly you’re under suspicion.
How many people do you think are aware of this practice by the most ultra-orthodox sect that’s by it’s nature very isolationist? Hell, I bet many more people have heard the story of matzo being made using the blood of christian children than this particular ritual practice of circumcision.
I firmly believe if more knew then more would strongly object. Without fear of being labeled an anti-semite.
Only if it’s another guy’s. Or kid’s.
I realize this was the zombie part of the thread, but sheesh, counselor,* there aren’t 100 million Jews in the whole world.* Let alone 100 million boy children born to Orthodox Jews in America in the past decade. (I’ll assume these cases were spread out over a decade, rather than over some shorter interval.)
There are ~14 million Jews in the world, of whom about 6.7 million are in the U.S. According to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, about 11% of the U.S. Jewish population identifies as Orthodox. So that’s around 750,000 Orthodox Jews in the U.S.
The U.S. fertility rate is 12.6 births per 1000 population. 12.6*750 = 9450 births to Orthodox families. Half of those, or about 4,725, are boys. Over a decade, that’s 47,250. Of those 47,250, 11 contracted herpes shortly after circumcision.
That’s about 1 out of every 4300, not 1 out of 100,000,000. The 1 out of 100,000,000 bullshit is just bullshit, and wild bullshit at that.
Obviously, that’s an estimate, but it’s more or less the right order of magnitude. If the 11 cases happened in 3 years rather than 10, multiply that 4300 by 3/10. If the fertility rate of the American Orthodox Jewish population is double that of the population as a whole, then multiply the 4300 by 2. If only about one-half of Orthodox parents get their children circumcised by mohels who use the mouth-to-penis method of stanching the flow of blood after circumcision, divide the 4300 by 2. Etcetera.
I guess, Bricker, that you weren’t being your usual pedantic self when you came up with that number. And the thing is, (a) yes, you can do that sort of arithmetic, and (b) you know enough to know that it was a total exaggeration of the remoteness of the risk, even before doing arithmetic.
And you’re sure to say you were only being hypothetical. Sure - a hypothetical that had zilch to do with the facts. Whatever.
You might want to start off being pedantic with your own self before being pedantic with everyone else. 
Legal definitions are legal, not conventional. As far as I’m concerned, putting a dick in your mouth and sucking is dicksucking whether it gets you off or not. And sure, the people doing it now may be doing it out of a sense of tradition and religious observance* but someone had to start it.
*You draw your conclusions about what that sort of tradition means for a religion and I’ll draw mine.