On the Foreskin Question

Last year, a woman in South Florida spent nine days in jail for refusing to allow her son to be circumcised. The father of the child called circumcision “just the normal thing to do,” and the courts sided with him in the parents’ long running dispute over the matter. Forced to sign over consent for the circumcision in order to regain her freedom, the mother quickly became a martyr for the anti-circumcision movement. The image of her final surrender that circulated in the media – hands held together as she cried to the heavens – was the perfect postmodern rendering of saintly iconography, a fitting tribute to the religious fervor often expressed by those opposed to circumcision today…