smegma.
I can quote some Scripture for you as well, if you like.
The answer is "yea."
or>
B. consider that some women don't really like the uncut version. Small consideration but it is still a consideration.
As far as cleanliness that just goes to parenting.
The place you want to go to is
http://www.nocirc.org
They provide factual information on male and female circumcision.
If you decide to go ahead with the procedure, make sure they apply some topical anesthetic first!
No son of mine is getting that barbaric procedure. Why get it done if a person isn't Jewish or Muslim?
We no longer use circumcision as a sign of the Covenant.
The first council of Jerusalem ended the debate, according to the Acts of the Apostles. At the council, St. Paul spoke forcefully about what he believed to be prerequisites for becoming a Christian, and he was told to return to the Gentiles and to tell them that all they need do was stop their pagan ways and not to eat food sacrificed to idols. Circumcision was not mentioned as a requirement. The church, with the supreme teaching imprimatur of St. Peter, decided it was not required.
I cannot venture into the health benefits of circumcision. I do know that, rarely, the foreskin can cause a constriction that impairs organ function, but that is easily remedied and is even more rarely threatening to life or health. Discomfort drives one to a doctor long before illness results. Cleanliness is the only reason I've ever heard advanced as an argument for circumcision, but I think that's kind of lame.
My parents opted for circumcision for me. Is it necessary for any reason? No.
From my perspective in health care every year lots of men have to have theirs removed, evidently because they just didnt care enough to take care and things got messy and infected etc. This procedure would have to be worse as an adult. I have not read this but I have heard that circumcised have essentially zero risk of cancer and that "cancer will only develop in uncircumcised men" (albeit the risk is small even for the uncircumcised)
We spoke to our parents about circumcision before ultimately deciding against it. Everything went along swimmingly for a while, but we now regret it.
If you don't circumcise, your son can experience fusion of the uncircumcised skin to the penis. Just this past year, my son wanted to bathe like a big boy (he's 5 years old); meaning, he wanted to bathe himself. He used to ask me to "check" his "winkie", and I worked with him on cleaning it. We thought everything was okay, but he apparently wasn't as concerned about "checking his winkie" as he was about playing in the tub.
End result, fusion problem. We are consulting with a pediatric urologist about having it done, but it's more dangerous now. He has to be put under anesthesia (which, while very common, is not without it's risks). He's going to feel the pain of it (YOUSA!) for at least 10 days, and the risk of infection is greater because he can reach for it.
My advice? Get it done while he's a little one, can't mess with it, and is far too young to remember the pain of it.
It has been my understanding that as far as circumcision and health are concerned it is more a matter of cleanliness than a real health issue. It is easier to keep clean.
On the religious aspect I'd say unless you are Jewish then the issue is just a matter of choice.
Sounds like you are leaning against circumcision and that sounds fine.
As far as aesthetics are concerned I say a circumcised member looks better.
My impression is that it is the American female is the one who is the perpetrator of this "tradition." When this looked like it might be an issue for us (it wasn't) my wife's sister who had had her little boy snipped was almost hysterical at the thought we wouldn't do the same. An RN (who had had her boy snipped) said that if the boy turns out to be gay, it will be more painful to have the circumcision done later (apparently the foreskin gets in the way of anal sex). If you want to make sure that your boy is already to engage in homosexual anal intercourse, you'll have him snipped. If not, you won't.
As his father, you have a duty to protect you son against this mutilation. Complications are apparently not that uncommon, if you include the loss of normal function of the tissue removed, the complication rate is 100%. Of course you might want to have the opportunity to turn your boy into a girl.
Modern circumcision is a form of genital mutilation.
It is the equivalent for males of the barbaric procedures in Africa where little girls have their clitoris and vulva (the vaginal lips) cut off.
You are quite correct that the commandment of God to Abraham involved a much milder form of circumcision than what is generally practiced today. See Michaelangelo's statue of David, who has a very noticeable foreskin, and yet was circumcised. Modern circumcision is a "teaching of men" that Christ condemned in the Pharisees, not a commandment of God.
There is no medical reason to circumcise. 80% of the world's males (essentially everyone who is not Muslim, Jewish, Black African, or American), do not get circumcised. Why is America in the company of those backwards groups? Should we really be emulating Zambia, Sudan, and Yemen, or countries like Sweden, Japan, New Zealand, Italy, Korea, and Ireland?
Circumcising your son, besides mutilating his sexual organ, also opens him up to the possibility of complications arising from the procedure. Medical literature notes such complications as death from hemmoraghing, destruction of the penis necessitating a sex change from degloving of the organ (loss of skin), and blood infections. Circumcision is done without anesthetic - an operation of the most sensitive part of the body with no pain-killer. Generally, the baby shrieks in the most terrifying pain for about 15 minutes during this procedure and must be restrained by being tied down.
Circumcision permanently scars the male penis and reduces its sexual functioning and ability to experience pleasure, since it makes what is left harder, tighter, and less sensitive, aside from removing a large portion of the penis with much of the nerve endings (the foreskin and frenulum). It also inhibits female pleasure during sex, very frequently preventing female orgasm, something noted as a "benefit" as long ago as 1000 years by medieval Rabbi Moses Maimenodes in his "Guide for the Perplexed".
The main reason so many American males are circumcised is because quack doctors at the turn of the century pushed it as a "cure" for masturbation in order to prevent blindness and drying out of the brain. This ridiculous belief caught on and spread like wildfire, helped along by the belief of the US Army Medical Corps that circumcision would prevent veneral diseases. I would trust you don't believe this sort of nonsense, especially given America's prominent place as one of the countries with the most rampant incidence of VD, despite near universal circumcision.
It is also noteworthy that the growth of circumcision among males correlates well to the explosion of divorce in this country since 1900, and America's sky-high divorce rate, generally twice the level of the rest of the civilized west. Sexual dissatisfaction is at the root of many a divorce.
Several recent medical articles have touched on the circumcision topic.
Laumann, Masi, and Zuckerman, in the Journal of the American Medical Association (1997, 277:10527, "Circumcision in the United States: Prevelance, Prophylactic Effects, and Sexual Practice") found that circumcised men were more likely to masturbate, engage in heterosexual anal and oral sex, and to engage in homosexual acts. --- Is that what you want your son to grow up tending towards?
O'Hara and O'Hara, in the British Journal of Urology International (1/99, Vol 83, Supplement 1, pp 79-84, "The effect of male circumcision on the sexual enjoyment of the female partner"), found that around 90% of women who had experience with both circumcised and natural men preferred and found sex more enjoyable with natural men. --- What do you want your future daughter-in-law to experience?
"I want him to look like his Daddy" is what Mrs. Gb said.
Say what? Someone's going to be comparing his dick with yours? Give me a break.
My take? If you're not a Jew, it's a religious obligation, and not done by a medical doctor. For a Christian, there's no religious obligation. None.
This is anecdotal evidence from my pediatric RN experience.
The circumcised babies had less urinary tract infections, were cleaner, and I do recall some fusion issues in the uncircumcised which were referred to the urologists.
They use a local anesthetic now for the procedure (insist on it!). I don't have kids but if I did, I would have it done ensuring my baby boy was properly anesthetized.
I don't have a dog in this hunt...no male children, but you sure started a thread that's been interesting to watch:)
Just think....if this thread had been posted in News/Activism, it would have about 155,000 views and 42,000 replies. :)
"Dude, where's my foreskin?"
There's a consideration right there: do you want your son to resemble Europeans (cholileh!) or Americans??? The more circumcision is rejected in America, the more the US becomes like the other nations.
Circumcision was (is) the mark of the coventees. Behold, I show you a mystery...
The Victorians believed it would cure males adolescents of masturbation. See "On Circumcision as Preventative of Masturbation" presented by the president of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1891.
One woman's visceral opinion: I think uncircumcised organs are gross, even on babies. The thought of one adult-size makes me queasy, so I'll stop thinking about it now. I just ate.
And one anecdote regarding health/cleanliness: the uncircumcised son of one my friends went through months of antibiotics for what they thought was a urinary-tract or bladder infection, because the urine samples always came back positive for bacteria. Turns out bacteria under the foreskin were contaminating the samples, and he actually had no infection. Antibiotics can be very hard on kids.
How do you think a mohel learned this procedure? He learned it from watching an experienced mohel, who learned it exactly the way he was taught by a more experienced mohel, who learned it from an older more experienced mohel...[iterate hundreds of generations]...who learned it from Moses, who learned it from Amram, who learned it from Levi, who learned it from Jacob, who learned it from Isaac, who learned it from Abraham.
There is no evidence whatsoever that brit milah was ever anything other than what it is today, certainly nothing to suggest that the Maccabees altered or tampered with the procedure.
All that said, since you are not Jewish, you are not obligated in brit milah so this is entirely a personal decision for you and your family. Oh, and congratulations.