Germany to religious: We'll allow circumcisions

Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman promised Germany's Jewish and Muslim communities on Friday they would be free to carry out circumcision on young boys despite a court ban which has provoked concerns about religious freedom.

In a country that is especially sensitive to allegations of intolerance because of the Nazis' slaughter of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, the government said it would find a way around the Cologne court ban in June as a matter of urgency.

"For everyone in the government it is absolutely clear that we want to have Jewish and Muslim religious life in Germany," said Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert. "Circumcision carried out in a responsible manner must be possible in this country without punishment."

Back in the antediluvian past (1947) when I was born, male infants were routinely circumcised regardless of religious persuasion. At least this was how it was in the big cities. Out in the heartland it may well have been different. I was not consulted, of course, and I doubt my parents were either.

None of my four sons have been circumcised. When they were coming along, there was some pressure to have them circumcised because they would look different from me if they were not. No one ever raised that question to my father - he was born at home and left intact. I felt no trauma that I can recall witnessing his intact prepuce and comparing it to my own "naked" glans.

I think the Jews and Muslims should be allowed to have their male children circumcised. Of course the question of "female circumcision" practiced in many areas of the Muslim Ummah is an entirely different matter. Pure barbarism!

Genuflectimus non ad principem sed ad Principem Pacis!

Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. (Isaiah 49:1 KJV)

Gro-o-o-o-oan!

How the heck did Germany get this wished on it in the first place. And do they need to amend their constitution in order to tell their version of the screams to take a long walk off a short pier?

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