This is disturbing beyond belief. On several levels.
A Canadian father tried to perform a circumcision on his son (because he believed the Bible wanted him to)… and failed.
He should’ve known it would end badly, considering he had screwed it up before when he performed a circumcision on himself:
In April, 2007, [father] D.J.W. dosed his son with honey wine, placed him on clean garbage bags and a diaper on his kitchen floor, and used razor blades boiled in water as well as a veterinary powder suitable for livestock and horses to deal with bleeding. The boy said “ouch,” cried for less than two minutes and fell asleep. The father gave the boy ice cream “and told [his son] he could pick all the movies for a week,” said the ruling.
The man testified in court that, after the boy consented to the circumcision, he fed him some mead — a biblical beverage made from honey — lay him on the kitchen floor, stretched his penis across a cutting board and cut off part of the foreskin.
When asked in court whether the man used ice to ease the boy’s pain, he replied, “Where would the Israelites have found ice?”
“Ouch”?! That’s it? I’ve had worse reactions when stubbing my toe. This kid has his foreskin cut off and he cries for only two minutes? Damn.
And how on earth does a four-year-old boy consent to anything like this? I thought that pathetic defense was only used by pedophile priests.
But there are even more disturbing parts to this story:
The man’s lawyer, Doug Christie, told Judge Allan at the outset that he would try to have the case tossed out on constitutional grounds, saying his client’s religious motive negated any criminal intent.
There’s a defense than could also be used to justify a person killing someone else because he/she committed blasphemy or happened to be gay.
Religion should not be a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.
As Physicist Steven Weinberg said so well, ”With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
And you know what’s even more disturbing than all that?
The man was found not guilty of aggravated assault.
He was found not guilty of assault with a weapon.
He was only found guilty of criminal negligence.
The sentencing will take place on December 10th.
I’m very curious how this situation would have been handled if we were talking about this dad’s daughter instead of his son. Certainly, there would’ve been more of an outcry and I would think his crime would be considered far worse.
But why?
(Thanks to everyone for the link)
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