Pic from 'recycled scissors (click for original)
… so to speak. According to the Huffington Post, California’s direct democracy fetish is stepping into new areas including the practice of infant circumcision for religious purposes.
It brings up a number of interesting issues. On the one hand, it raises questions for libertarians – often the most vocal advocates of more direct democracy. The Huffington Post quotes one Heather Wisnicky saying:
It’s your choice, it’s your child…government can’t rule us on everything we do,”
So there’s the oppression of minorities argument for starters. It also addresses some wider issues around family law – the secularist argument that our children must choose their religion for themselves. On balance, I’d probably agree with that one, but we have to ask where it will end.
Should we, for instance, be banned from raising our children in the faith of our own choosing altogether? No daily prayers? No baptisms? No rite-of-passage rituals, worship or sacraments? In the long run, hours each week practicing a religion add up to an imposition far more severe that a little snip at a time in your life that you’ll recover from it fairly quickly?
Some big decisions about social rules are probably best left over long periods of time when they will work themselves out tidily rather than the short, sharp shock of a public referendum.
(Hat-tip: Maria)
PS: You have no idea how many very poor jokes I’ve added and deleted in drafting this post. Even this interesting study of the health benefits is worth reading if only to find the name of the World Health Organisation’s quoted doctor.
