If there is a better private system, this is not it.

I’m a libertarian because maximizing individual liberty is the primary goal of collective human action. Whatever the means, achieving maximal individual liberty is the end.

The question is, of course, by what means? I’ve toyed with the idea – to be honest, not seriously – of no government. I understand and accept the idea that private processes would develop in the absence of a formalized government. The protection of rights present¹ in our current system of government would largely remain. However, given human nature, there is too great a threat to individual liberty inherent in no formal government. A monopoly on force is dangerous, but no such monopoly is not automatically better for the individual. A government with limited, stated powers designed to protect the rights and liberty of all its citizens is, I believe, the ideal.

That is the ideal. We don’t live in libertopia, though. Such a government must exist with its limited powers explicit and limited only to protecting rights. I use the term collective human action above to express this narrow, rigid concept of legitimate government. We act together specifically so that we may be free from each other generally.

Since a government’s objective is to maximize liberty, I’m interested in minimal restrictions on individuals. The valid test for restricting an individual’s free action is objective, unrequested harm. Where an action causes such harm, a government’s power to restrict the action is legitimate. Beyond that boundary, any government action is a violation of the powers granted to it by its organizers.

(There is a large, important gray area concerning subjective harm. Although it must be explored to develop a complete political philosophy, I leave that discussion alone for my purposes here. It’s pointless to consider the subjective before settling the objective. It is also unnecessary because I wish to consider only objective harm here.)

So, circumcision.

A recent string of Free Talk Live episodes discussed circumcision in the context of how far states should go in preventing child abuse. The show’s hosts generally take an anti-state position, relying instead on the expectation that private systems will fill the void if we dismantle the state. In many cases I’m sympathetic to this view. Particularly with economics and all the ways in which our government seeks to improve our world, the state makes obvious, large mistakes because it must plan rather than rely on ever-changing needs to direct the market. But in matters of protecting rights, I am not sympathetic to this view. The state is a means to protecting rights and achieving individual liberty. This function is necessary in any society, and the properly-constrained state is the least bad option. “Properly constrained” is the key, of course. I do not foresee a private market in force being any more properly constrained than the state yet still undertaking the necessary task of protecting citizens.

From the June 11, 2008 episode (approximately 1:26:45 in):

Mike (Caller): So I think we’ve all agreed that at three or four years old, a child cannot make a rational decision.
Ian: I would certainly agree with you. No doubt about it. And here’s what I would suggest. You should go and live on a piece of property that has deed restrictions or private law, whatever you’d like to call it. You can call it deed restrictions, you can call it private law. Then, you know, in that world of private law, you can construct and create whatever sort of rules you want to as far as the behavior of your neighbors is concerned. And if you want to ban things like mutilation, or hitting children, or whatever it is that you consider anathema to your belief system, it would not be allowed by punishment of whatever it is that you determine the punishment should be.
Mark (Host): And before one moves to that community, they have to agree upon those rules.
Ian: Right. Then you wouldn’t have anyone around you that was doing those awful things and you wouldn’t have to be concerned with it. And then those who wanted to mutilate their children, or whatever, could go and live together in their own little, you know, their own little society.

Being anti-state is the wrong way to approach this issue as a libertarian. Certain rights are inherent and universal to all humans. Do the children in the latter community not have the same rights they’d possess if born in the former community? Children would not choose these community rules as adults would, so the protection of rights become merely the will (or whim) of the strong. Suggesting this as a viable option towards maximizing individual liberty treats children as property. What is it worth to be free of force from the state if you are not free of force from your parents?

Maximizing individual liberty requires limiting an individual’s liberty to the extent that his unfettered actions would infringe on another individual’s liberty. Doing so in that limited manner protects individual rights. We can argue whether the state or some other method is the best way to maximize individual liberty by protecting the rights of all individuals, but there is no valid argument that this should not be the primary goal of any society.

On June 16, 2008, a caller continued the discussion on circumcision (approximately 17:40 in):

Dan (Caller): Hi, Ian. Umm, a couple weeks ago, or maybe it was last week, I’m a podcast listener, so I get times mixed up.
Ian (Host): Okay.
Dan: There was a gentleman who called in, actually, a couple Christians who called in talking about how they don’t want to force their morality on people but, you know, if people are, you know, abusing their kids and you’ve got to do something, you’ve got to have the government around to do something. And I just wanted to submit that in a totally free society where you have, you know, where people have the liberty to basically do what they want as long as they’re not hurting anyone else, you’re still going to have people hurting each other, but it’s no different than today. My point was going to be that, uh, why can’t the kids, if they have a case that they’ve been abused, uh, why can’t they just sue in retrospect?
Ian: They should be able to.

That continued after a commercial with a restatement (approximately 20:04 in):

Dan: Ok, um, I was talking about how there have been some Christian libertarians who have been calling in talking about how, you know, they they just can’t accept the idea that we have to allow everyone full liberty to raise their children how they want to, you know, because, you know, what if, well what if they’re, you know, doing something like, you know, they brought up female circumcision or something like that.
Ian: Yeah.
Dan: And what I was saying is why, you know, the burden of proof should be on the accuser. So why don’t we allow people to do, to, you know, to raise their kids as long as there’s no clear signs of abuse, and if the children are damaged by it, sue in retrospect. That rather than having the burden of proof constantly on the parents so they have to prove to this government that we have constantly that they’re not abusing their children.

Proposing a post facto process for recourse in the event of harm is a no-brainer. (What system of mediation, if not the state’s legal system?) We have a system for this today that covers all sorts of offenses that are also a crime. Obviously harmed individuals have a claim to compensation against those who harmed them. Offering that as a substitute for prohibition avoids the real issue of rights violations. We prohibit certain assaults despite having options for restitution after the assault because protecting the right of every individual to be free from harm is at the core of liberty.

Unfortunately the typical libertarian approach to hypothetical questions seems to revolve around the assaulted being able to pull out his concealed weapon and stop the assault, hence
no need for the state. I exaggerate wildly, even though my hyperbole is useful in hypotheticals because adults have some ability to defend themselves, whether through brains, muscles, or technology. There is merit to the argument of self-defense. But we’re not discussing adults. Many, if not most, minors lack sufficient resources in these defense mechanisms. Infants lack all resources. Yet, as citizens with equal, natural rights, all minors must be treated as more than inconvenient obstacles to extending hypotheticals into real world rules. The notion that children complicate libertarian political philosophy – or worse, that libertarianism does not apply to children – is a failure of application, not the underlying principles of liberty and rights. The reasonable concept of proxy consent matters because parents are the proper decision-makers where necessity demands it, but proxy consent does not matter most. No adult has a legitimate claim to violate those rights merely because he or she is the child’s parent.

Permitting parents to surgically alter the healthy genitals of their (male³) children grants them an illegitimate liberty interest in altering – and harming – the body of another at the expense of his legitimate liberty interest in self-ownership, a right that includes his foreskin. Endorsing that because it precludes state involvement, even with a post facto compensation system in place, turns antipathy for the state into a fetish, at the expense of individual liberty. Being oppressed in private is still oppression.

The debate continues (I’ve omitted an inconsequential bit):

Mark: Ok. Yeah, absolutely true. Umm, I think that, uh, people that have been, you know, harmed by their parents in some way should be able to sue and umm, I would think in the case of a female circumcision that likely they would, uh, you know, a jury would find for them. Umm, male circumcision, maybe not so much. You know, pervasive morality matters in a, in a society, and if you’re going to get a jury of your peers, you know, they’re probably not going to find that you were harmed significantly by a male circumcision. Maybe they will, I’m not sure.

It’s a strange kind of libertarianism that places the “pervasive morality” of the majority before the protection of individual rights and objective standards of harm.

Continuing, with omissions for space:

Ian: You mean Dan’s idea?
Mark: Yeah, Dan’s idea would be, would take care of it relatively quickly because, well, people don’t want to be sued.
Ian: Well, right, because, uh, if there was a judgment against the parents in that particular case then, uh, then the other parents that were considering doing that would have to think twice.
Mark: Absolutely. And of course social ostracization would, uh, keep these types of things from really cropping up within private, voluntary societies so you’d have private arbiters, you’d have parents who, and uh uh and new new parents who would already have signed on to the rules. And, uh, man, if they broke those rules, they would not be able to prosper, and they would be hit pretty hard financially.

There is some merit in this argument, but as it applies to doctors, not parents. That’s already starting in the U.S. It will have more impact as the courts become more sympathetic to the proper inclusion of medical ethics into unnecessary genital cutting.

With parents, we’re back to being stuck with the pervasive morality of the majority at the time of the circumcision, and parents already ignore what their son may or may not want in favor of what they think he wants, or worse, what they want. That misses the point. A male can later make the case that he was harmed, but this solution relies on two faulty assumptions. First, it assumes the male minor’s (obvious) rights aren’t worth protecting while he is a child, perhaps merely because his parents circumcised him rather than a stranger. Their liberty is more equal than his liberty. This can never be correct.

Second, it assumes that money will sufficiently compensate him for his lost foreskin. Not all men would accept that trade-off. Not all parents will be able to fund a judgment against them. And if they don’t expect to have the resources in the future, would the parents be concerned enough about a possible future judgment to not circumcise? Nor will all parents with the financial means to fund a jury’s punishment value the lost dollars more than whatever value they place on the act of circumcising their sons. Remember, all tastes and preferences are subjective. Just as the evaluation of the foreskin’s worth will vary by individual, the evaluation of the worth of a dollar (or a million or a billion) relative to pleasing God/a perceived reduction in HIV risk/avoiding the “ick” factor/etc. will vary by parent(s). There simply is no reliable way to predict what individual’s will do. Incentives matter, but not everyone responds the same way to the same incentives.

This hypothetical system also ignores the extreme cases where the harm to the boy is greater than the typical circumcision outcome. It seems reasonable to suggest that the rare boy who dies from circumcision will not be satisfied by the possibility of money he can’t collect.

We’re left with individual rights as the only defensible guide for what system should be in place. I can’t make this point enough. Every individual, regardless of age, has the same natural rights. An age-based inability to defend one’s own rights does not render those rights subject to the will of another, even a parent. What system will protect those inherent, equal rights? If you value liberty, that is the discussion. If you value only the dismantling of the state, understand what your position entails. Don’t wrap it in talk of liberty and pretend you’ve found an intersection that bypasses the state. You haven’t because compensating the violated after an identifiable, predictable violation rather than protecting before the violation has nothing to do with liberty.

I’ll end with a concise statement of the philosophical consideration at hand, from D.A. Ridgely at Positive Liberty (from a different context):

The quintessentially libertarian position, in any case, is that the burden must fall on the state not before it permits some exercise of individual freedom but before it prohibits it. It is, by contrast, the quintessentially conservative position (of the Burkean variety) that tampering with long established traditions and institutions is so inherently risky that we must apply the social equivalent of the precautionary principle before proceeding.

I’m arguing the quintessential libertarian position. I’m not willing to concede that parents have an absolute right to make medical decisions for their children. Such a right assumes the option to make objectively stupid medical decisions for another. I’m thinking of parents who let their children die while waiting for prayer to save them. Still, parents deserve at least first – and great – deference to their judgment. The burden falls on the state to prove that it may prohibit the circumcision of minors. Where direct medical need is absent, as it is absent in ritual/social circumcision, the objective infliction of harm on the child to achieve subjective benefits valued by the parents, however well-intentioned, is sufficient proof that state prohibition is not only legitimate, but a requirement to protect rights and maximize individual liberty for everyone. Imposing routine/ritual circumcision is not a medical decision, so the decision deserves no deference. Whatever system is in place must recognize that and protect the child. The private system proposed by Free Talk Live is unacceptable because it fails to embrace liberty for all.

¹ Admittedly, our representatives disregard this duty. This is a flaw in e
xecution, not design. But it’s presence in our government is a significant, complicating issue.

² By force, I mean objective harm. The state does not have the constitutional power to cut your genitals at the discretion of its representatives, at least not without due process. (Also, see footnote ¹.)

³ The distinction permitting only the circumcision of male children demonstrates our unprincipled, unequal understanding of the rights of children.

Is this an M.D. from a correspondence school?

When public health officials say voluntary, adult, …

The soldiers in the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) will be the first men to benefit from a government policy to use male circumcision as a tool in the fight against HIV/AIDS, according to senior health officials.

… The voluntary circumcision programme is expected to start in August.

“We will use the military as role models for the rest of the population – they are adult enough to give consent, and if young men see that soldiers are willing to suffer the pain of circumcision, they will also get the courage to do it,” said Dr Agnes Binagwaho, executive secretary of Rwanda’s national AIDS commission (CNLS).

… they never mean voluntary, adult. Never.

“After the military we will concentrate on students and, finally, on the general population; eventually we hope to move on to circumcising new-born babies, as long as research proves that it is advantageous and cost-effective to do so.”

Want to bet research will prove that infant circumcision will be advantageous and cost-effective, in spite of reality that Rwanda has “only one doctor for every 50,000 people”? Should it skew the analysis against infant circumcision that the rate of HIV infection in Rwanda is higher in circumcised men than in intact men? Of course, but it won’t. It’s so much easier to blame the foreskin than the male attached to the foreskin.

———-

Also, should we put trust in Dr. Binagwaho when she couldn’t pass a basic statistics class?

“People must be made aware that although circumcision is beneficial, there is still a 40 percent risk of HIV transmission, so they must know that it must be used in conjunction with another HIV prevention method, such as condom use,” she said.

I expect those unfamiliar with statistics to make such a mistake. Is it too much to expect a doctor to be familiar with statistics?

———-

Post Script: Based on the article’s closing paragraph about funding for Rwanda’s circumcision plan, I feel confident that I will eventually be able to remove my updated qualification from this entry. The plan outlined in the article is stated in Rwanda Fiscal Year 2008 Country PEPFAR Operational Plan (COP). We will continue throwing money at this ignorance.

Pitting anecdote against anecdote ignores reason and logic.

There is much to commend in this article, but like all attempts to be unbiased on a topic where introducing subjectivity is the only method for achieving balance, the conclusion veers into scare tactics.

[Opponents] declare [circumcision] mutilation.

But there is another side to the story.

Dave, who didn’t want his full name used to protect the privacy of his circumcised 19-year-old son, objected to the practice after his son’s birth.

“I went through it, and I didn’t want him to go through it,” said the 48-year-old electrical engineer from Chantilly in Northern Virginia. “They cut millions of nerve endings that would be nice to have.” [ed. note: thousands of nerve endings]

But, as his son grew, he couldn’t pull the foreskin back far enough to clean it without significant pain. He stopped cleaning, and infection after infection of the penile head and foreskin ensued, turning his penis beet red.

“We ended up doing the circumcision when he was 5,” Dave said. “It was awful. For years after, he got into the bathtub only gingerly, putting his hand over those parts the whole time.”

Now, Dave advocates having the procedure done as soon as possible after birth.

“My son suffered by not being circumcised early,” he said. “And I wonder what long-term impact that has had on him.”

This is not another side to whether or not it’s appropriate to circumcise healthy male infants/children. This is an emotional appeal to a child’s ability to remember surgery and the unlikely-but-possible risks of life. Even a cursory look at circumcision statistics in other Western countries will confirm this article’s anecdote to be devoid of any merit as a defense in favor of imposing surgery on healthy children to avoid risks later.

It should be clear that I understand some males will need medical intervention on their genitals if left intact. (And if circumcised.) That is not then justification to circumcise children. Many females (and some males) will eventually need some kind of medical intervention for breast cancer. We do not see that as a defense for removing the breast tissue from infants because we are not irrational on that front. Apply a speck of reason and the similar excuse for male child circumcision fails.

To the anecdote directly, I can only speculate. It is not unusual for the foreskin of a five-year-old boy to at least partially adhere to his glans and inner foreskin. Pulling the foreskin back further than it can easily retract is bad and can cause pain. (Almost as bad as forcibly separating the foreskin from the penis prior to circumcision.) Perhaps that occurred here. I’ve certainly heard of parents being aggressively determined that the foreskin should retract fully before it naturally separates. This can lead to problems.

But, again, I’m only speculating. Speculating is pushing limited facts into a preferred narrative. Dave speculates to the reporter. (Circumcised males get infections.) I’m speculating here to illustrate the process. I don’t need speculation to defend my position. I’m willing to concede that Dave’s anecdote is exclusively an example of the risk of being intact. It happens, unfortunately. But where his stance needs speculation and anecdote, I have reason and evidence:

“… And, urinary tract infections are so rare in baby boys that the increased risk of it isn’t significant,” [pediatrician Roxanne Allegretti] said.

Anecdote of the “my best friend’s cousin’s first-grade teacher’s next-door-neighbor’s driving instructor once had <insert problem here> with his foreskin, leading him to get circumcised at <insert age here>, and he definitely remembers the horrible pain” is not a compelling reason to perform surgery on healthy children. Healthy and surgery are mutually exclusive for those who can’t consent.

The ability to reason includes recognition of gender-bias.

Ignorance can speak truth, even when ignorance doesn’t intend something so broad (emphasis added):

… I feel that “female circumcision” gives this practice a veneer of respectability to hide behind. Uninformed people likely know that male circumcision is done mainly for hygienic or religious reasons and has nothing to do with sexual pleasure or causing other problems down the road, as mutilation may cause with menstruation and childbirth. Circumcision is pretty much the opposite of mutilation as far as having an effect on a person.

So “female circumcision” sounds kind of like a benign minor medical procedure, while “female genital mutilation” tells it like it is. I don’t think calling the practice circumcision will fire many people up against it – it almost sounds like a P.R. phrase for genital mutilation, designed to mask what really happens.
This practice has also made its way to the United States, through immigration.

I don’t think calling the practice circumcision will fire many people up against it – it almost sounds like a P.R. phrase for genital mutilation, designed to mask what really happens. Indeed. It’s almost as if Americans embrace that mentality with our treatment of male children. Almost, of course, because only They&#153 engage in immoral actions. We&#153 are always correct, never to be questioned again.

I will be using that quote frequently in the future.

Central planning isn’t just for economics.

I wonder if these two Ugandan MPs have ever spoken to each other. First:

THE parliamentary food forum has asked the Government to provide funds for the a campaign against female circumcision. Addressing journalists at Parliament on Friday, Bukwo Woman MP Everline Chelangat urged the Government to establish vocational institutions for girls to fight the custom.

Second:

THE chairman of the parliamentary HIV/AIDS committee has appealed to men to embrace circumcision to reduce the risk of contracting the virus.

“There is nothing to lose when you remove the fore skin of the penis. Men who are not circumcised are more prone to HIV/AIDS,” Dr. Elioda Tumwesigye said on Saturday.

Dr. Tumwesigye is wrong about what a man loses from circumcision, and he is too broad in his declaration of the benefit against HIV because he ignores the necessary contributing factor, an HIV-infected female partner and condom-less sex. But where he accepts the distinction of choice in losing his perceived nothingness, these statements on male and female genital cutting are reasonably congruent, if slightly tone-deaf. As I’ve always advocated, I do not care what an adult – male or female – chooses to do to his/her genitals. Leave it alone or hack away. MP Chelangat is clearly arguing against forced cutting. I just wonder whether or not that distinction of choice exists in Tumwesigye’s intent:

Tumwesigye noted that attempts to make circumcision compulsory for men had failed because of the misconception that it was a practice only for Muslims.

I won’t read that as a statement that Tumwesigye isn’t interested in choice, although I think such an inference makes sense. Where are those attempts originating? If that’s what he’s saying, I’m not surprised. Respecting the science makes many doctors forget the ethics. I don’t know why, but it does. I think I’ll have more on that idea in the near future.

There isn’t much more to say than, from a marketing perspective, it’s fascinating that these two articles appeared on the same day in the same news outlet.

The facts are, in fact, relevant.

In response to the Jeremy Kuper essay I criticized yesterday, Laura MacDonald writes an excellent rebuttal demonstrating how little attention Kuper gave the topic beyond the superficial evidence that he believes supports his decision to circumcise his son. This is excellent:

Specifically, let’s talk about the foreskin itself. Its function is – bizarrely – one thing you’ll find absent in most of the discussion articles written about circumcision.

… Often presented as a “tiny” vestigial flap of skin, most particularly by women and by men who haven’t got one, a male foreskin measures around 10-15 square inches when unfolded, some 50% of his overall penile skin system. …

Right, then. Next time they’ll try harder, I’m sure.

For the sheer giggle factor of proving how extreme and indefensible circumcision is when compared to other interventions (i.e. condoms), this:

There is no convincing proof that circumcision reduces sexually transmitted infections in developed nations, and its effect on penile cancer rates is similar to that of soap.

I know. Soap, the preposterous suggestion we needn’t bother offering to men. Especially since they won’t need soap after circumcision. Or does that not make any sense? Whatever. As long as parents get to cut their children in the end, every absurd justification is logical.

“Research” is easy when you seek only approval.

In an attempt to defend the indefensible (i.e. circumcising his healthy son), Jeremy Kuper writes a rambling, disorganized essay at Comment is Free that skims only the surface on each aspect of the debate. Moreover, he includes the euphemism “member”, so the weight of his position automatically suffers according to my rule on penis euphemisms. You can read the essay, if you’re interested, but I already wasted enough time for all of mankind. Consider it not worth your time. And as proof, Kuper writes this near his conclusion:

Possibly the worst effect of circumcision for Jewish people, is the accusation that it is a form of mutilation, and cruelty to a small baby who is unable to give his consent.

Merriam-Webster defines mutilation as “to cut up or alter radically so as to make imperfect” or “to cut off or permanently destroy a limb or essential part of”. Someone takes a blade to a child’s healthy genitals and removes a functioning part of the body. Are we going to quibble over “essential”, because in the context of the foreskin, the clitoris holds no greater objective essentiality. I am not making an accusation that circumcision is a form of mutilation. I am stating the obvious truth that all forms of genital cutting on healthy, non-consenting individuals is mutilation.

Some uninformed critics even appear to confuse it with the horrendous practice of female circumcision, and the removal of the clitoris in some cultures, which is now largely banned. Dr Nahid Toubia argues that the term female circumcision “implies a fallacious analogy to non-mutilating male circumcision”.

Kuper is the uninformed individual in this debate. I “confuse” male and female genital cutting because they are the same act: medically unnecessary genital cutting on a non-consenting individual. That’s not a complicated analysis to arrive at. A few minutes spent objectively considering the act of circumcision could get to that understanding, even if he was unwilling to accept the comparison.

A few more minutes spent researching female genital cutting would demonstrate that removing the clitoris is FGM, but FGM is actually a spectrum of offenses that involve surgical alteration of the female genitals. A quick trip to Google reveals the four recognized types. At least one type is no more damaging than male genital cutting, yet all non-medically-indicated female genital cutting is illegal in Western societies. If I am to be the person who is wrong in this debate, then Kuper must defend the position that legislative bans on all female genital cutting are too broadly defined.

He must also reject the Western liberal tradition of gender-neutral equality under the law, but I’ll accept one concession to facts and modernity if his ego can’t handle an honest, complete exploration of the topic.

There is no do-over in surgery.

I’m still catching up on some of the circumcision-related news items form the last few weeks. Sometimes, I step away from the topic for short periods to recharge my tolerance for the inevitable frustration that arises when considering the various ways the rights of the circumcised are ignored, and the manner in which every breathless proclamation seems to instill even more determination that every male will just love being surgically altered shortly after birth. Stepping away eliminates reduces the number of verbal tirades I feel compelled to unleash. I always come back, though.

This story, forwarded to me by a loyal reader who forwards me useful material that I too often fail to translate into entries, is worth mentioning. Now that I’m looking, I can find a few references to it, but most media seems to have ignored it. Probably because it directly challenges the cheerleading for infant circumcision in the recent past. Anyway, the gist:

A quarter of a century after the outbreak of Aids, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has accepted that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared.

In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO’s department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalised epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa.

This is the appropriate point to remind everyone – the unethical scientists at WHO specifically – that the recent research we’ve been bombarded with repeatedly for the last two years suggests that voluntary, adult male circumcision reduces the risk of HIV transmission from female-to-male through heterosexual intercourse. Those infants who’ve been circumcised in the mad rush to embrace fear unsupported by at least the anecdotal evidence any mildly observant individual in a Western society could pick up? Ooops. But, hey, women will dig it, so there’s that.

In case you think this might cause the media to apply any critical thinking to the way they’ve reported on circumcision, fret not, they’re fully prepared to let you down if you get optimistic. In the same article, this:

Critics of the global Aids strategy complain that vast sums are being spent educating people about the disease who are not at risk, when a far bigger impact could be achieved by targeting high-risk groups and focusing on interventions known to work, such as circumcision, which cuts the risk of infection by 60 per cent, and reducing the number of sexual partners.

Interventions known to work. Process that for a moment. It’s known to work¹ at reducing the risk of HIV transmission from female-to-male through heterosexual intercourse! Isn’t the point of this story to report on the possible exaggeration of an epidemic among heterosexuals? I can imagine the editorial review of this article. “Everyone, shake your pom poms with me. Give me a “C”! Give me an “I”! Give me an “R”! Give me a “C”!

I won’t put it in print, but I’m swearing right now.

¹ There is room to debate this, primarily on methodology. Another time, perhaps.

Your honor: peas or carrots tonight?

Via Amy Alkon, a story with some relevance to my stance that medically unnecessary male circumcision of all minors should be prohibited (and enforced, where necessary) by the state. From Canada:

A Canadian court has lifted a 12-year-old girl’s grounding, overturning her father’s punishment for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet, his lawyer said Wednesday.

The girl had taken her father to Quebec Superior Court after he refused to allow her to go on a school trip for chatting on websites he tried to block, and then posting “inappropriate” pictures of herself online using a friend’s computer.

In the case of cultural circumcision, which includes medicalized circumcision that seeks potential health benefits, the obvious first standard for what to prohibit is objective harm. Circumcision is surgery, so it always involves objective harm to the body. When there is no medical need for the surgery, forcing it on another person is an assault, regardless of the intent. Preventing this type of harm to one by another is a legitimate function of any state. Prohibition of medically unnecessary circumcision forced on minors is valid. QED.

Discussing the male circumcision issue within the libertarian community is an interesting process. Strangely, many libertarian males seem displeased, however mildly, about their parents circumcising them. Yet, in an odd consideration of limited government and individual liberty, they also seem reluctant, often vehemently, to consider state involvement. This is more a misdirected focus on minimizing the state as the ends than on maximizing liberty with the best, possibly necessary means. (More on this to come in a detailed post I’m working on.)

But there is a limit to legitimate state intervention. Always, the first response I get in the libertarian discussion is that parents make all kinds of decisions for their children that the child may not like, should we legislate those? I think that logical leap is lacking in logic, but it’s not (generally) offered with malice, so it’s worth considering. I usually discuss some combination of objective harm and the permanence of choices. Unless one is being intentionally ridiculous, it’s worthless to advocate an exact comparison between requiring your child to take piano lessons and requiring him to undergo unnecessary surgery that removes portions of his healthy, functioning anatomy. “Requiring” is a key word in considering intervention, but “unnecessary” is the much more important word as it ties directly to objective harm. Surgery causes objective harm in a manner that piano lessons do not. The difference, to some degree, is parenting. I do not favor state intervention in normal parenting, nor have I written anything that could be construed as favoring limitless intervention. I offer specific guidelines for legitimate state intervention.

Which brings us to this case from Canada. I guess it’s possible that there’s more to the case than the reports I’ve read. It seems hard to believe that, so I will assume there is nothing more. So, this judge made an egregious error. The state’s intervention is illegitimate.

It’s not controversial to accept that, which gets us back to the more fundamental issue. What is the legitimate boundary for state intervention? It’s somewhere short of this case, we all probably agree. It’s at least as far as prohibiting the assault of children, however well-intentioned. We don’t all agree, or I wouldn’t be writing this. But I’ve made an argument in favor of my stance that outlines criteria for deciding how to limit or condone state involvement in parenting decisions. This case shows that my effort is an attempt at an objective standard that aims to protect the rights of all individuals, regardless of their power within society based upon having not reached the objectively arbitrary age of majority.

Are we angry about the assaulter or the assault?

I only know the facts to the extent that the article states:

School board members voted 5-0 to fire Mount Vernon Middle School science teacher John Freshwater. Board attorney David Millstone said Freshwater is entitled to a hearing to challenge the dismissal.

Freshwater denies wrongdoing and will request such a hearing, the teacher’s attorney, Kelly Hamilton, told the Mount Vernon News.

Freshwater used a science tool known as a high-frequency generator to burn images of a cross on students’ arms in December, the report said. Freshwater told investigators he simply was trying to demonstrate the device on several students and described the images as an “X,” not a cross. But pictures show a cross, the report said.

I stand firm on innocent until proven guilty. Until he has a hearing, I’m not interested in saying much more than anyone who would teach religion in a science classroom is not qualified to teach science. I hope it’s obvious that anyone who would burn an image on a child’s arm, be it an “X” or a cross, is fit only to wear a prison jump suit.

That said, is this about violating the First Amendment rights of the children or violating their human rights? Change the scenario: would we allow parents to burn an image of a cross on their child’s body? Many will reflexively offer some variation of “of course not”. But that’s not accurate. We already allow parents to “burn” a (permanent) religious mark on their (male) child’s body through genital mutilation. And that doesn’t disappear in three or four weeks, as the burned image of the cross/”X” disappeared. Why is the less damaging, less permanent assault reprehensible and the more damaging, more permanent assault considered a reasonable parental choice?