posted September 20, 2007 01:08 AM         

quote:

---

I'm not the one implying that people who don't see my PoV are sexual predators and bad parents

---

And, for like the fourth time, I didn't say that. If you would, please clarify to me what part of the statement (that people should be allowed to decide for themselves how much of their sexual anatomy they are allowed to keep) you disagree with?

posted September 20, 2007 01:11 AM         

quote:

---

I am sorry Johnny but the link you provided cannot be taken into acocunt as a legitamate source. Its obviously wayyy too biased in its viewpoints and presentation.

Call me up once you all put you guys actually wanna debate again.

---

Let me know when you're ready to put your ego down and learn that no, your penis is not better than an intact one.

posted September 20, 2007 01:13 AM         

quote:

---

Your opinion or my opinion means nothing to the millions of babies each year who are mutilated. I'm spreading facts, that's all.

---

it's true, it's the babies who are affected. that's the saddest part. taking the time to read the material about it makes an enormous amount of sense.

posted September 20, 2007 01:20 AM         

quote:

---

"The Case Against Circumcision," by Dr. Paul Fleiss, a Jewish MD

---

quote:

---

I've spoken to him , bud. He's Jewish.

---

i'm thinking i am too..

posted September 20, 2007 01:24 AM         

Xodian, if the American Medical Association or the American Academy of Pediatricians is not good enough for you, then little I can post is going to convince you. I'm asking you to use your common sense (every male mammal has a foreskin, it's there for a reason) and your own good-will to investigate the matter thoroughly (the con side as well as the pro) before imposing your will on your child's penis.

That's all I'm asking.

The hard part of this is realizing that I can't convince everyone, and, when I fail, that's one more baby boy that is going to be restrained in a Circumstraint (tm), have a Gomco clamp or a Plastibell (again, TMs) applied to his penis, and then, with no anesthesia (and it's proven that babies do feel pain), the most sensitive part of his penis sliced off. There are videos of this available - watch one, and I bet you'll never circumcise your son.

Knowing that those are the stakes, it's hard to 'debate' this dispassionately. Yes, I have an agenda, and yes, I'm biased.

So I hope, Xodian, that you look into this, and don't just write off the whole thing because I'm an inept debater. I hope you look into it for yourself, or, barring that, at least give your son, if you ever have one, the dignity of deciding for himself when he can look at the info and come to an informed decision.

More than 80% of the world's men are intact; your son isn't going to die from not having his foreskin sliced off. Give him his own choice.

posted September 20, 2007 01:25 AM         

AG, big hug of LOve. ...

posted September 20, 2007 01:30 AM         

quote:

---

(angry babbling about Dr. Fleiss)

---

As I've already stated, facts stand by themselves. Who presents them is irrelevant. There are literally thousands of doctors who say the same thing as Fleiss; I picked him because he's Jewish (and Fleiss is a Jewish name, in case you didn't know), and Dulce Luna made a point earlier in the thread about taking information as valid when she hears it from source who would have reason to support its opposite.

So, um, get over it. Check out doctorsopposingcircumcision.org if you want to find sources you consider more whatever.
http://www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/

posted September 20, 2007 01:30 AM         

A case on behalf of Jesus Christ
Jesus case before Kenyan court
A case on behalf of Jesus Christ has reached Kenya's High Court after two millennia.

A group called Friends of Jesus is seeking to clear the name of Jesus Christ. They say his human rights were violated when he was convicted and crucified without a fair trial. They also want a ruling on whether Jesus' sentencing was legal, arguing that the correct penalty for blasphemy at the time was stoning, not crucifixion.

~wonder what will become of it?

-kyle

posted September 20, 2007 01:31 AM         

Again, its not something many people complain about where I come from not only because its customary but it doesn't hurt anyone. I've not really heard of many Americans complaining about either unless they have had serious mishaps. And in that case I would completely understand why they would be against it but I would also say to them that your experience is not everyone else's experience.

Anyways, I stick by my opinion that it is the choice of the parents on whether or not ot circumcise their sons. Alot of people back in my country of origin do it as custom and I don't see why anyone should infringe on that considering its pretty much inconsequential minus rare occurences of serious mishaps. And that goes ditto for Muslims and Jews who practice it as a religious rite.

posted September 20, 2007 01:34 AM         

quote:

---

Ok, this is really getting to be ridiculous now. So now any male who argues the positive side of circumcision thinks their penis is better than yours? Thanks for the laugh, hon.

---

Uh... what?

quote:

---

Its not really something I've heard of many Americans complaining about either unless they have had serious mishaps.

---

quote:

---

But you know what, I'm going to leave this thing anyways since I can't seem to debate this without being accused of things that are not true.

---

posted September 20, 2007 01:38 AM         

quote:

---

Xodian, if the American Medical Association or the American Academy of Pediatricians is not good enough for you, then little I can post is going to convince you. I'm asking you to use your common sense (every male mammal has a foreskin, it's there for a reason) and your own good-will to investigate the matter thoroughly (the con side as well as the pro) before imposing your will on your child's penis.

---

posted September 20, 2007 01:39 AM         

quote:

---

"Why is the operation of circumcision practiced?
One might as well attempt to explain the rites of voodoo!"

---

- William Keith C. Morgan, MD
The Rape of the Phallus, 1967

quote:

---

"Greed plays a role in causing unnecessary surgery, although I don't think the economic motive alone is enough to explain it. There's no doubt that if you eliminated all unnecessary surgery, most surgeons would go out of business. They'd have to look for honest work, because the surgeon gets paid when he performs surgery on you, not when you're treated some other way. In pre-paid group practices where surgeons are paid a steady salary not tied to how many operations they perform, hysterectomies and tonsillectomies occur only about one-third as often as in fee-for-service situations."

---

- Robert S. Mendelsohn, MD. "Confessions of a Medical Heretic" (1979)
Chapter 3 ("Ritual Mutilations"), pp. 58-59.

quote:

---

Circumcision is a solution
looking for a problem.

The medical profession bears responsibility
for the introduction of prophylactic circumcision
without scientific basis in the past
and for its continued use and rationalization
without scientific basis in the present.

---

- Dr Edward Wallerstein
Circumcision: An American Health Fallacy, 1980

quote:

---

Nature is a possessive mistress, and whatever mistakes she makes about the structure of the less essential organs such as the brain and stomach, in which she is not much interested, you can be sure that she knows best of the genital organs.

---

- Sir James Spence, 1964

quote:

---

When slavery was a custom,every right minded person supported it. Nothing is as powerful a legitimizer as social custom,even more powerful than law.

---

- Thomas Szasz

quote:

---

I strongly recommend leaving the foreskin alone.

---

Dr Benjamin Spock
Baby and Child Care

quote:

---

"I have some good friends who are obstetricians outside the military, and they look at a foreskin and almost see a $125 price tag on it. Each one is that much money. Heck, if you do 10 a week, that's over $1,000 a week, and they don't take that much time."

---

- Dr.Thomas Wiswell,
quoted in "The Age-Old Question of Circumcision"
by Betsy A. Lehman, Boston Globe, June 22, 1987, p. 43

quote:

---

If God had wanted us to be uncircumcised,
we'd all be born with foreskins.

---

- J. D. Ahmanson

quote:

---

Any invasion of the body is an invasion of the particular person.
Indeed, it is the ultimate invasion of personal dignity and privacy.

---

- Justice Cory of the Canadian Supreme Court
R. v. Stillman, [1997] 1 S.C.R. 607

quote:

---

"... as the history of female circumcision suggests, if male circumcision were confined to developing nations, it would by now have emerged as an international cause célèbre, stirring passionate opposition from feminists, physicians, politicians, and the global human rights community. If routine medical circumcision didn't exist today, no one would dare to invent it."

---

- David Gollaher
Circumcision: a history of the world's most controversial surgery
2000

quote:

---

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth…It is simply too painful to acknowledge — even to ourselves — that we've been so credulous. So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new bamboozles rise.

---

posted September 20, 2007 01:39 AM         

quote:

---

Again, its not something many people complain about where I come from not only because its customary but it doesn't hurt anyone. Its not really something I've heard of many Americans complaining about either unless they have had serious mishaps. And in that case I would completely understand why they would be against it but I would also say to them that your experience is not everyone else's experience.

---

I would tend to agree with you...except that I haven't ever experienced what it's like to have foreskin. To a certain degree you can't miss what you never had, so it's possible that the circumcized masses are just ignorant to what it's like to not be circumcized.

posted September 20, 2007 01:43 AM         

quote:

---

If I was to cut off any other part of a baby for no good cause and without an anaesthetic, I'd be struck off the medical register and the parents would most likely lose custody of the child.

---

- Christopher Green, paediatrician,
Camperdown Children's Hospital, Sydney
2001

quote:

---

We should show greater respect for the genius of Nature's designs, rigorously tested and refined over millions of years.

---

- Charles, Prince of Wales

quote:

---

The road to modern medicine is littered with the bones of medical treatments that millions of people once swore by - and are now known to be worthless or even harmful.

---

- Robert Park, Voodoo Science,
Oxford University Press, 2000

quote:

---

No one has the right to demand
that others participate in religious rituals.

---

- Ann Landers

quote:

---

...where possible, circumcision should not be done
until the person is able to give informed consent.

---

- Dr Rodger Charlton, June 2001
School of Postgraduate Medical Education
University of Warwick, UK
"Men's health - a neglected area?"
NZ Family Physician, v28 no3
September 7, 2001

quote:

---

Circumcising a baby boy to protect against STDs
is like selling your car to make sure he's never injured in a crash.

---

- "Dr Schwanz"
Men's Health, July/August 2002

quote:

---

One of the worst things that can happen to a people
is when they embrace oppression as a right.

---

posted September 20, 2007 01:48 AM         

quote:

---

Certainly there are also fully functional penises that are circumcized...

---

A recent study on the effects of circumcision on male sexual response:
http://www.circumstitions.com/Sexuality.html#sorrells

From BJU International 99 (4), 864-869
(British Journal of Urology International,
Volume 99 Issue 4 Page 864 - April 2007)

quote:

---

They found that the most sensitive part of a circumcised penis is on the scar in the middle underneath (19). But several places on the foreskin (3, 4, 13, 14) are more sensitive than that. The glans (8, 9, 10 11) is the least sensitive part of the penis, contrary to a common claim, but where it is covered by the foreskin (8, 9,11), the glans of the intact penis is more sensitive than the circumcised.

---

posted September 20, 2007 01:58 AM         

Seems to me that it's not just the Christians who promote hatred and ill will.

The lessons to learn are tolerance and respect for the beliefs of others even if it is not your belief.

posted September 20, 2007 02:03 AM         

don't ever put your baby under the knife!

It's stupid!

posted September 20, 2007 02:07 AM         

It is a tragedy that so little is being accomplished in the battle against the practise of female genital mutilation – a phenomenon that is widespread in the Muslim and African worlds. But it is a double tragedy that so little is done, let alone even said or known, about male genital mutilation in our own society.

Male circumcision is practiced world-wide by about one billion Muslims, three hundred million Christians, sixteen million Jews and an indeterminate number of atheists. It is almost unheard of in Europe, South America, and non-Muslim Asia. The inhabitants there know better.

Male circumcision entails the cutting off of the foreskin of the penis. It severely weakens the power of sexual excitement and the capacity for sexual enjoyment.

This barbarity is rooted in religious fanaticism. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the fear and hatred of sexual pleasure that lurks behind the crime of cutting off an essential part of human sexual anatomy.

It is by no means insignificant that St. Thomas Aquinas, classic Muslim authors, and great Jewish philosophers, such as Philo and Maimonides, all affirmed that the objective of male circumcision was to reduce sexual pleasure. It is no coincidence, therefore, that, as late as the 1970s, leading American medical textbooks advocated circumcision as a way to prevent masturbation.

But think about it: if circumcision reduces the frequency of masturbation because it reduces sexual pleasure, what does it do to the sexual pleasure in lovemaking?

Question: why is every normal human being born with a foreskin? Why, in females, does it protect the glans of the clitoris? Why, in males, does it protect the glans of the penis?

Dr. Paul M. Fleiss is a leading expert in the function of the foreskin. He has conclusively demonstrated that male circumcision denudes, desensitizes, and disables the penis.

The foreskin possesses a rich concentration of blood vessels and nerve endings. Yet circumcision severs 80 percent or more of it. Thus, circumcision cuts off more than 3 feet of veins, arteries, and capillaries, 240 feet of nerves, and more than 20,000 nerve endings. The foreskin's muscles, glands, and mucous membrane are mutilated.

This is not to mention that circumcision makes the penis as much as 25 percent or more shorter. The skin that is left in an unnatural state tugs the penis into the abdomen.

Circumcision radically desensitizes the penis. The rich nerve network and all the nerve receptors in the foreskin are severed. The loss of the protective foreskin obviously desensitizes the glans. Since the membrane covering the glans is now exposed and subjected to constant abrasion, it becomes desensitized, dry and tough. The nerve endings in the glans, which in the intact penis are just beneath the surface of the mucous membrane, are now out of sexual function.

The foreskin is meant to naturally glide back and forth over the penis. This motion is the process by which the penis and the orgasmic triggers in the foreskin, frenulum, and glans are stimulated. In intercourse, the foreskin facilitates smooth movement between the mucosal surfaces of a man and a woman. It enables the penis to slide in and out of the vagina without irritating friction, since it possesses its own natural self-lubricating mechanism.

The female, meanwhile, is stimulated by moving pressure rather than by friction only – as with circumcised males.

Talk to any woman who has been with both circumcised and uncircumcised males.

Is it really any surprise that so many circumcised men are today making efforts to have their foreskin restored?

Yes, we must recognize the barbarity of female genital mutilation in the Muslim and African world, and it is our duty to try to save the next generation of girls from this savagery.

But let us not become complacent and self-satisfied. We are, at this very moment, viciously mutilating the potential of sexual pleasure in our male population.

Think about it: how can a product of nature be so terrible that it needs external violence to be decimated?

The religious fanatics who associated sexual pleasure with the devil and hell have surely done a great job. Because of them, we have rationalized all kinds of reasons to mutilate our baby boys’ genitals.

But if a human being is going to damn his own soul because of how he uses his own sexual pleasure, let us leave it to him to decide on that matter. That is, after all, what God’s sacred gift of free will is all about.

By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, November 05, 2001

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=B2E1AA1E-B3F5-452C-8A19-8D8BC29AD3 65

posted September 20, 2007 02:09 AM         

THAT MALE CIRCUMCISION mutilates male sexual pleasure is a fact that has been thoroughly documented. It is unfortunate, therefore, that this anti-sexual savagery continues to be widely practiced in our own society.

Even more unfortunate is the fact that not only does male circumcision reduce male sexual pleasure, it also inflicts severe emotional and psychological damage upon its victims. Yet there is even more ignorance and indifference about this fact than about the anti-sexual component of male circumcision.

Don’t kid yourself: circumcision of the male foreskin, which is almost always inflicted without anesthesia, is extraordinarily painful and traumatic. Whether or not this violence is experienced by a newborn, a young child or an adolescent, the victim’s brain and emotional state is sharply and negatively affected.

Think about it: the penis is an organ that is connected to the operation of the brain and, aside from the overall objective of procreation, it is designed for the experience of sexual pleasure and the expression of love. So when it is mutilated with painful violence, the victim obviously suffers a permanent alteration of his normative brain development for the normal expression of sexual pleasure and love. All future experiences of genital pleasure involve, to certain degrees, the memory – even unconscious -- of severe pain.

Developmental neuropsychologist Dr. James Prescott has done extensive research into the neurological damage caused by circumcision. He has documented how the excruciating genital pain that is suffered, even "unconsciously," by a new-born male baby, has long-term, damaging consequences on his ability to separate the differences between pain and pleasure in love and intimate relationships. The brain system that has been designed for pleasure is, because of circumcision, encoded with pain. It is simply a fact that this reality disfigures subsequent experiences of pleasure -- and not just in the sexual context.

The blurring of pain and pleasure in the developing brain provides the foundation for many circumcised males to need pain in order to experience pleasure, or vice versa. It would not be unreasonable to argue, therefore, that much of the violence in a society could very well be rooted, in part, in the extent to which that society practices male circumcision.

Scientific studies have consistently shown that circumcision disrupts a child's behavioral development. Studies performed at the University of Colorado School of Medicine revealed that circumcision is followed by prolonged, distressed non-REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Because of the infliction of unbearable pain on their neural pathways, circumcised babies withdrew into a type of semi-coma that lasted for days and sometimes even weeks.

Numerous studies have confirmed that children and adolescents who experienced circumcision were terribly frightened during the assault and exhibited behavior problems after their circumcisions. Among the symptoms were stuttering, obsessive compulsive reactions, ticks and aggressive behavior. Psychological trauma also included the development of night terrors, temper tantrums and rage. In many children, suicidal impulses developed. Fear of authority was also greatly increased.

Studies have also shown that that circumcision adversely alters the brain's perception centers. Moreover, circumcised boys have been shown to have lower pain thresholds than girls or intact boys.

Male circumcision has been shown to disrupt the mother-infant bond during the crucial period after birth.

But we know how crucial this bonding is, especially in terms of what we know about how developmental deprivation of affection in the maternal-infant relationship leads to future violent destructive behavior in the child-turned-adult.

Neuronal damage occurs in babies who are deprived of maternal affection. In other words, even if a mother gives her circumcised baby affection, there is evidence to suggest that this dynamic is often distorted because of the effect of the circumcision itself – in terms of how the baby is able to receive affection after being the victim of excruciating violent pain.

The point here is that circumcision prevents the normal sensory stimulation of the brain and emotional well-being, which is essential for normal human development and function.

Let us also keep in mind that, in many cases, circumcision literally destroys an individual’s life. Many boys, for instance, have been transformed into girls because their circumcisions went wrong.

It would be silly, of course, to suggest that all males who are circumcised are sociopaths or psychopaths. That is simply ridiculous and we know better. But that is not the point. The point is that, in terms of what medical science tells us about the genitalia’s relationship with who we are, perhaps we should begin to think twice about mutilating our baby boys.

By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, November 06, 2001

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID={700CC34D-E679-4D1B-8F39-E782236 9F177}

posted September 20, 2007 02:12 AM         

Education is imperative!

posted September 20, 2007 03:28 AM         

Thank you Mirandee!

and any others who attempted to stay sane in this post over the last day or two since it went up...

My goodness! I was afraid to enter my own post for awhile there. LOL! -Whew!

Again, I found the article and thought to share it. I do believe it to be absurd, whacky, and strange. But interesting all the same. Two Millennia later this spiritual man Jesus still brings about great controversy. Now that's pretty amazing!