Comments
Caroline is right – tattooing a child, while gross, doesn’t diminish their future sexual experience… Re HIV it’s worth remembering that the HIV-circ studies only showed that circ reduced HIV over a short period in some promiscuous heterosexual men in Africa. There’s no evidence the protection is long term – and America’s problems with HIV and other STDs suggests otherwise. You have much higher rates than Western Europe where men are mainly intact. The reality is that circ changes a man’s sexual behaviour as he tries to compensate his sensual losses….more *nal sex more partners fewer condoms. But all this is irrelevant to a child who doesn’t have sex.

I hate to say it, but the attorney has a point. How many parents have their baby girls ears pierced? Tattooing is not considered the same because of the stigma we attach to it. A common reason I hear for circumcision is so a boy “will be just like his dad,” an asinine rationale if I ever heard one. We shrug at one form of genital mutilation while being horrified at the barbarity of those who would practice it on their daughters. Make the rules clear cut regarding how much a parent is allowed to alter their child’s body and what constitutes abuse.

I’m with mbaker…parents are allowed to determine appearance of their babies to a point, but the line draws at permanent changes (which ear-piercing is not) made for nonmedical reasons. Either way, this jackass is still worse than ear-piercers or circumcisers. He made a permanent mark on a child who is old enough to feel and remember the pain and humiliation, and it is a mark that ties him to a culture of dysfunction and crime, rather than to a religion or to a family. I still think infant circumcission is usually wrong, and I didn’t pierce my daughters’ ears as infants…just a distinction.

Unfortch for kids growing up in those environments, the gang ends up *being* family. But that’s besides the point. Is the tattoo wrong because of the pain of it’s application, or because it was a *gang* tat? Is it wrong *ever* to cause pain to a child for a cosmetic reason, because I can tell you, not all earring piercings are without pain. We can’t ask babies if they are numb enough. I know a child with a heart disorder who got circ’d at 8 years old because he got one bladder infection. He had to go off his anticoagulant meds for the surgery and had a debilitating stroke as a result. Should his parents get prosecuted? Yes, I’ve gotten way off track. I guess my point is that are we judging because of the kind of tat it was or the fact that it was a tattoo?

Rather ironically, the father claims the boy said “I want to look like you” and didn’t have to be held down. No baby and very, very few boys ever ask to be circumcised “to look like their fathers” even though that is a common excuse for doing it it. (Not many babies get STDs, either.) Clearly, circumcision is worse, and it’s about time the double standard was ended.

Comments
I completely disagree with the tattooing however I am appreciating the debate that it is bringing to the general public about infant circumcision. It is a very comparable situation and maybe it will make some stop and think a little deeper about the life long effects circumcision has on their sons.

Tattooing doesn’t remove an organ with multiple unique functions. Tattooing doesn’t increase the odds that the child with have erectile difficulties in the future, or be unable to bring his female partner to orgasm through intercourse.

A 7 year old can indicate that they are in pain and receive adequate “post op” pain relief. A 7 year old can take almost all antibiotics and therefore be safer from “post op” infections. Rates of MRSA from circumcision in hospital are probably higher than would be tolerated from a tattoo parlour (though in this case the tattoo was done “at home”)

Tattooing has never caused anyone to lose their penis and possibly go through sexual reassignment surgery.

Tattooing as an entering “man hood” ritual is also cultural and religious and ergo if we tolerate male circumcision for that reason than we must also tolerate tattooing

Let people raise their own damn kids. If this symbol was anything other than a gang tattoo (say, a tribal marking common to an ethnic group), people would not be up in arms. I’m going to circumcise any boys that I have, and I resent all of you people screaming about it. Back off.

Who came up with the theory that un-circumcised males are more likely to give women orgasms? The only men to make me orgasm have been circumcised.