An analogy between male circumcision and ear-piercing is no
more dispositive than an analogy between male circumcision and female
circumcision, it seems to me. There’s a spectrum here: Normal ear-piercing
has virtually no effects on bodily function, since there seem to be no really
significant nerve endings or other really significant tissue removed in the
process. Normal male circumcision might well have some effects on sexual
sensation, given the removal of an area of skin that does seem to have
considerable sexual sensation. Many forms of female circumcision pretty
clearly have very substantial effects on sexual sensation (as well as having
other harmful effects).
What makes this a hard question is precisely that we don’t know
much about where to draw the line on this spectrum – a spectrum that of course
involves people’s altering other people’s bodies (even if those other people
are their children) and not their own. Incidentally, it’s far from clear to me
that a ban on tattooing under-18-year-olds in prominent places (which could
have marked effects on their children’s future social lives as adults) would be
unconstitutional or improper even if parents wanted to tattoo the children,
especially in an era when tattoos were hard to remove.
Eugene
Paul Finkelman writes:
Are they also banning parents from piercing the ears of children? In many
cultures it is common to see infant girls with pierced ears. Does the ban
extend to pierced ears before age 18? And then there is body piercing before
age 18. Is that being banned? Has the Court banned tattoos for people under
18?
_______________________________________________
To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see
http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw
Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private.
Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can
read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the
messages to others.
