Religious Special Pleading

I'm not going anywhere chuck, but I'm also not prepared to repeat the same arguments more than a dozen or so times. The points have been made; they stand on their merits.The thread is about religious special pleading - male circumcision is merely one example of it. I rather hope we can move on.

The trial of a man accused of female genital mutiltion ended with acquittal yesterday. This despite the fact that the girl had been cut.There's been only one other prosecution for FGM and that also failed.UK solicitor cleared of forcing daughter to undergo FGM | Female genital mutilation (FGM) | The GuardianA couple of years ago the NHS started collecting statistics on FGM victims as they entered the service for other medical conditions - maternity being the big one. So far they've reported 14,500 cases.

Well you got half of that right, but no matter.You seem to think that arguments are won by endlessly repeating assertions; I don't.

Ha! I'm positive that is not your motivation, but whatever.....as the kids say.Meanwhile, back in the world of facts and sanity: Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Hence special pleading. In the UK similar reluctance was shown for fgm because of a fear of offending cultural practice. We can at least now see the start of an intolerance to cultural and religous harm.

Pretty much, yes. There was and still are practical difficulties in prosecuting this offence but over and above this there has been a general reluctance to interfere in sensitive areas of religion and culture. The recent sexual abuse by Pakistani Muslims men on vulnerable white girls in the North of England had the same problem and this has been admitted by the services involved - police and social services.

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The Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal has been described as the "biggest child protection scandal in UK history".[14] From the late 1980s until the 2010s, organised child sexual abuse continued almost unchallenged by legal authorities[15] in the northern English town of Rotherham, South Yorkshire. It was first documented in the early 1990s, when care-home managers investigated reports that children in their care were being picked up by taxi drivers.[16] From at least 2001, multiple reports passed names of alleged perpetrators, several from one family, to the police and Rotherham Council. The first group conviction took place in 2010, when five British-Pakistani men were convicted of sexual offences against girls aged 12—16, but the ringleaders remained at large.[17] Other major convictions regarding child sexual exploitation included one in 2007 of a lone male offender who "abused over 80 boys and young men".[18] From January 2011 Andrew Norfolk of The Times pressed the issue, reporting in 2012 that the abuse in the town was widespread, and that the police and council had known about it for over ten years.[a]

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There were many variables at work here but significant ones involved race/culture/religion causing a reluctance to see the crimes for what they were.

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The failure to address the abuse was attributed to a combination of factors revolving around race, class and gendercontemptuous and sexist attitudes toward the mostly working-class victims; fear that the perpetrators' ethnicity would trigger allegations of racism and damage community relations; the Labour council's reluctance to challenge a Labour-voting ethnic minority; lack of a child-centred focus; a desire to protect the town's reputation; and lack of training and resources.[31][32][15]

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Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal - WikipediaOn fgm, similar things were happening. This is part of the Parliamentary Select Committee Enquiry summary

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The work that has been done by the media, politicians and most importantly by survivors and campaigners has raised the profile of FGM, so that many more people are aware of this horrendous form of child abuse. However, it is still the case that there have been no successful prosecutions for FGM in the UK in the last 20 years.
In Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham alone, 1,500 recorded cases of FGM were recorded over the last five years, with doctors seeing six patients who have undergone the procedure each week.
There seems to be a chasm between the amount of reported cases and the lack of prosecutions. Someone, somewhere is not doing their job effectively.

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Chair's comments
Rt. Hon Keith Vaz MP, Chairman of the Committee, said:

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"FGM is an ongoing national scandal which is likely to have resulted in the preventable mutilation of thousands of girls. Successive governments, politicians, the police, health, education and social care sectors should all share responsibility for the failure to respond adequately to the growing prevalence of FGM in the UK.

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In our report last year, we called for immediate action. In that time there have not been any successful prosecutions, and the number of referrals to the police has barely increased. This record is lamentable. The DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions) informed the Committee that she could only prosecute on the basis of evidence, the police said that they could only investigate on the basis of referral, and the health professionals told us that they could not refer cases because their members were not fully trained and aware of the procedure. While agencies play pass the parcel of responsibility, young girls are being mutilated every hour of every day. This is deplorable. This barbaric crime which is committed daily on such a huge scale across the UK cannot continue to go unpunished.

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The law relating to female genital cosmetic surgery is ambiguous and must be clarified. We cannot tell communities in Sierra Leone and Somalia to stop a practice which is freely permitted on Harley Street. Doctors are on the front line. Their professional organisations must do more to encourage their members to report cases of FGM. Without their active reporting of these cases, the full extent of FGM will remain hidden."

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Just a moment...Behind the excuses there's a similar reluctance based on offending a minority, in a similar way to not interfering with male circumcision. However, fgm being an obvious violent and life changing assault on children is beginning ti build some momentum and we'll eventually see some successful prosecutions.

You may be right, the cultural sensitivity thing - politically correct stuff - came later. Implementing the law seemed to become rather harder as time moved on.

Individuals do not have a general right to harm anybody.Cutting the skin off the penis is a harm in ALL cases. In some cases the harm causes death.

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Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?

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It's quite a talent you have, pretending to misunderstand stuff then twisting it around. It's extremely irritating and totally pointless.Anyway, the play is about someone demanding that which is lawful but unreasonable and it's the Jew wanting to do the harm - carving off his pound of flesh.But no matter. The point of the quote - as I'm sure you know - was that which was in bold; if you prick us do we not bleed. You said that children are not harmed by circumcision. It was an utterly stupid statement - they are pricked and they bleed. And they scream. That is harm by any definition at all.

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PAIN RESPONSE DURING CIRCUMCISION

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Infant response to circumcision pain.

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To help in determining the degree of pain and stress caused by circumcision, infant response was compared to that resulting from other procedures. Levels of cortisol (a hormone released into the blood in response to stress) and behavioral responses were recorded for newborns undergoing circumcision, heel-stick blood sampling, weighing and measuring, and discharge examination. Circumcision resulted in significantly higher levels of behavioral distress and blood cortisol levels than did the other procedures. Since the infant is restrained during circumcision, the response to the use of restraint was similarly tested and was not found to be measurably distressing to newborns.

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Circumcision is a surgical procedure that involves forcefully separating the foreskin from the glans and then cutting it off. It is typically accomplished with a special clamp device (see Fig. 2). Over a dozen studies confirm the extreme pain of circumcision. It has been described as among the most painful [procedures] performed in neonatal medicine. In one study, researchers concluded that the pain was severe and persistent. Increases in heart rate of 55 beats per minute have been recorded, about a 50 percent increase over the baseline. After circumcision, the level of blood cortisol increased by a factor of three to four times the level prior to circumcision.

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Investigators reported, This level of pain would not be tolerated by older patients.
Circumcision pain is described in this research study by Howard Stang and his colleagues from the Department of Pediatrics, Group Health Inc., and the University of Minnesota Institute of Child Development: There is no doubt that circumcisions are painful for the baby. Indeed, circumcision has become a model for the analysis of pain and stress responses in the newborn. They report that the infant will cry vigorously, tremble, and in some cases become mildly cyanotic [having blueness or lividness of the skin, caused by a deficiency of oxygen] because of prolonged crying.

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According to adult listeners in one study, the infant’s response during circumcision included a cry that changed with the level of pain being experienced. The most invasive part of the procedure caused the longest crying. These cries were high pitched and were judged most urgent. A subsequent study confirmed that cries with higher pitch were perceived to be more distressing and urgent. Excessive crying can itself cause harm. In a rare case, an infant cried vehemently for about ninety minutes and ruptured his stomach. Using a pacifier during circumcision reduced crying but did not affect hormonal pain response. Therefore, while crying may be absent, other body signals demonstrate that pain is always present during circumcision.

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My bold.Infant Responses to Circumcision

Jehovah's Witnesses are in the news here again for various kinds of child sexual abuse within their community. The Guardian has over a hundred cases and more are being uncovered. In yet another form of religious special pleading JWs have their own internal 'legal' system of dealing with criminality in their community, but their 'court' requires two phyical witnesses to a crime, so guess what, child abuse, domestic violence and rape allegations virtually never succeed and are raely made. This stupidity and complacence is apparently scriptural.

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A solicitor representing some of the alleged victims said she believed there were thousands of complainants in the UK and that the people who had contacted the Guardian were just the tip of the iceberg.

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Kathleen Hallisey, a senior solicitor in the abuse team at Bolt Burdon Kemp, acting on behalf of 15 alleged victims, said: Given the number of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the UK, and what we know about the pervasiveness of abuse in the organisation, there are likely to be hundreds and probably thousands more victims. This is truly just the tip of the iceberg.

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Champion said she was concerned that victims had to report their abuse to elders, without independent scrutiny.

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She also expressed concern that abuse claims could only be taken before a committee for investigation if there were two witnesses to it. Abuse happens in the shadows, so to ask for a second witness is ludicrous and effectively prevents reporting, Champion said.

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Just in case you think otherwise, I *have* noticed that you are attempting to avoid responding to the only point being made, which is that cutting off the foreskin of a baby causes severe pain and bleeding and occasionally death. ie physical harm.

You seem to be developing Faith's convenient memory. I am responding to your denial that circumcision causes harm. I assume that having 'been there and done that' you no longer deny that bleeding, pain and death is harm?

No, harm - particularly physical harm - is objective not subjective. If you prick them they bleed. Attempting to pass harm off as dependant on who does it is simply special pleading. Would we allow this practice if it didn't exist is a good test Some things are really simple. Cutting the foreskin off a baby (obviously without its consent) for no medical, purpose causing pain, suffering and occasional death is the very definition of harm.Quite apart from that, there is no 'good'.

Oh crap, I thought we'd made progress. (Not really.) Yes if done without consent. But we've done this, I'm not going round this more than a dozen times. No there aren't. Harm is a well defined legal concept, moreover everyone knows exactly what it means; particularly when they're harmed.