A few days ago, I had a conversation with a Mormon friend who recently became a father to a healthy baby boy. He made an offhand comment about insurance not paying to cover the circumcision, so I asked why he had it done. I expected him to say something about how circumcision is more hygienic or that he wanted his son to look like him ... but to my great surprise he said "It's just something Mormons do."
It's not my intention to start a debate about the merits or morality of circumcision, I simply want to know if it is something the LDS Church requires of its male members. I can't imagine that going down well in Latin America.
I don't know if it's required. I do know that in the US, it IS something mormons do. It was done to me.
I asked my still TBM mom, when I was 35, why she had me circumcised. Took her a minute to get over the shock of me asking such an "inappropriate" question. I asked again. Her response? "I don't know. Everyone did."
It was a common thing done to most boys in the past. I'm Canadian, athiest, and I was genitally mutilated. When our boy was born 13 yrs ago, they no longer did it, unless you insisted upon it. I think it was a medical trend awhile back, and maybe wasn't specific to religion or area. That's my perceptions about it. My mom said the same thing ... everybody did it, doctors recommended it, etc, etc. Now, that's changed. Go figure.
The American Pediatric Association came out with a new recommendation in 2008 and said that if it is not your religious or cultural belief, then it is NOT recommended to circumcise. I had my son right before this policy change and spent a lot of time researching what I thought was the best thing to do. I decided not to, with my decision mostly based on the fact that there are no more health risks and only rare exceptions with health risks. I also just couldn't bring myself to have it done to my son. In the East Coast it's not as common to circumcise though and my hospital only did about half the time (one of the largest hospitals in the country). My Mormon friends were all shocked, however; with one even thinking it made me a bad mom. Shrug. I don't judge if others choose to circumcise their kids or not. What business is it of mine. Kinda weird for an grown adult to sit around and think about other adults' children's penises. Scary and idiotic, actually.
Ummm, no. Here's what the American Academy of Pediatrics said in 2012 - "Evaluation of current evidence indicates that the health benefits of newborn male circumcision outweigh the risks and that the procedure’s benefits justify access to this procedure for families who choose it."
European doctors would sing a different tune. There is no reason to force this on a baby. To put an open wound on a child's genitals that will be in a diaper? For what? Condoms prevent STDs. There is water and historically how many men have died from being intact? There is just no reason to not let a man decide if he wants to be cut as a man.
This article had some interesting perspectives on circumsized Dr's in America making value judgments on circumsision, the nation where circumcision was once nearly universal. Anyway, just another point of view to read.
Yeah, that's just one more thing I'm pissed about. Did it ever occur to these idiots that if males weren't intended to have foreskin they would have been born without it?
Abraham and god can keep the whole damn "covenant" bullshit to themselves and leave innocent babies alone.
I assume you have dental work and hopefully mix in some soap and toothpaste as well. I even clip my nails, and cut my hair, despite what nature would have me result in. And I got a vasectamy when I was done having kids, barbaric no?
Hygiene? There is water. Every excuse people use to force circumcision on babies is stupid. There is no reason for it. Most men in the world are intact. If a woman is thick enough to reject someone like Charlie Hunnan for being intact or most of Europe and Asian i will not have any son of mine cut for her. I am sorry. It is peeling a baby and a lot riskier than leaving someone intact and letting them decide.
Plus Joseph Smith was intact. So why keep doing this?!
Then you would also be promoting FGM, because whatever potential hygiene problems that men have, women have many times over. With men it's simple to stay clean. Do all men stay clean? No. Do all women? No. But an unclean woman is many times dirtier than an unclean man.
Women have more folds and crannies than men do. And get more smegma. Cut a man and he still has to wash his penis and without foreskin it dries and gets callused
A month ago, I asked a pediatrician what percent of parents request their boys be circumcised nowadays. He said it's roughly 50/50 in the medical group he's in (San Diego area). Other than the Jewish population, he said it's hugely popular with our military population.
In a way, I'm surprised the church doesn't require circumcision, since intact males have to keep themselves clean by touching the penis, and they could say it leads to masturbation. In the past, even non-Mormons believed masturbation was a serious sin, and that circumcision was thought to reduce the urge. As it is, the culture itself still favors circumcision since it goes back to when most doctors recommended circumcision for boys for hygienic reasons. If Mormon culture starts to catch up with the rest of Western society, then I might see the church starting to require it.
No. It is not a religious requirement. That your friend said "It's just something Mormons do" speaks more to the fact that Mormons feel compelled to put every facet of their own lives into a church context.
Knew someone who had a circumcision at 22 for medical reasons....not a job scene. I was done in 1959, can not say I remember it nor have any long term hangups about it happening.
I don't think it's really a Mormon thing. I was circumcised and my parents weren't LDS yet. I had my son circumcised and it had nothing to do with the church. Just a cultural thing. Also, a girl told me once that she would never give a guy a well 'you know' if he wasn't circumcised and that's all I needed to hear.
In my TBM family, who produced three boys in the 1930s and 40s, in a very Mormon town, they did not circucise the first one. They had a new, non-Mormon doctor for the second delivery, and that boy was circumcised. The third boy was not circumcised. They never explained why they did it or why they didn't do it.
A TBM niece who was living in Switzerland with her husband when her first boy was born was frantic that she couldn't get him circumcised. She finally found a Jewish mohel who was willing to do it. I have no idea why.
When my two sons were born in Utah in the 1950s, the hospital circumcised the first one without even asking. We insisted that the second not be circumcised.
Why would it be "a Mormon thing"? Moroni 8:8 says that circumcision as a religious rite was done away with in Christ.
Going anon here when talking about my stuff. I am intact and so was my father. Just to say this: I know I'm not as experienced as many of the guys here, but 10 out of 10 women have loved it.
I'll never forget my little baby boy wimpering in his bed. I knew immediately what had happened. I'd never do it again if I had had any more children.
My boyfriend is not circumcised (though a Jewish convert). His mother felt it was a crime to cut a new baby who was born perfect. I wish I had been that smart.