[mos_basik]

>>>>OutOfHere: Proposal: Imprison anyone who performs child circumcision.

>>>notmyjob: Even if they don’t [perform circumcision]? You're proposing violence to punish thoughtcrime. And violence to punish free practice of religion.

>>OutOfHere: No, I proposed prison to punish realcrime. And violence is not acceptable simply because religion says so.

>notmyjob: Ah, but you've contradicted yourself! You've proposed prison, which is violence, which you just said is unacceptable.

Man, that's twice now you've mischaracterized their statement to argue against it. Could you not? (Or you misunderstood them badly, in which case I apologize.)

OutOfHere's claim was "religion doesn't make violence acceptable."

I assume they'd also claim that violence in the form of "prison for punishing illegal behavior" is acceptable.

But moving on, sounds like the crux of this disagreement is whether a state should be allowed to punish behaviors permitted by a religion practiced by some of its citizens. A classic question. The whole separation of church and state thing in the US, and elsewhere. Easy to agree on the extremes:

"Should the state punish performing infant baptism in the catholic church"? (sprinkling water on baby's head) Probably an easy "naw, go ahead".

"Should the state punish human sacrifice as practiced by [insert least ambiguous historical example on relevant wiki page]"? Probably an easy "yeah, that's murder".

Harder to agree on other cases: Female circumcision? Polygamy? Going on a 2 year proselytizing mission? Male circumcision?

A state reaches those agreements through some political process. A religion reaches those agreements through ??? (process varies by religion; don't think I've heard of a religion that has an equivalent to California's Ballot Propositions--maybe that's a good thing).

(An aside here; a probable contender for ??? is "divine revelation", but that of course leads to the question: how come a decent number of neolithic etc religions condoned human sacrifice, but no modern major religion does (again, according to the wiki page)? Did the divines change up the rules on that for us? or did states exert pressure on religions to comply? or was ??? some human-driven process?)

Assuming the goal of most human organizations (examples: states, religions) is to improve human experience (i guess both now and in the hereafter)...

you know what, lunch break is over and ain't nobody got time to talk about the tensions and similarities between state and religious goals on the internet with random internet people.

might as well drop my 2c on the topic at hand - I consider circumcision a major body modification, similar to tattooing. I think it's reasonable for it to require informed consent, which a minor cannot grant by themselves. I think it's reasonable to allow circumcision of minors with the consent of a guardian. But then my thoughts get less well defined; I don't want infants circumcised period, but also I don't want teens with medical issues fixable by circumcision to be forbidden that option until they're 18. It's tough.