Oregon judge rules against 13-year-old’s circumcision

A legal case playing out now in Oregon is steeped in questions of family law, religious freedom and foreskin. The AP reports:

PORTLAND — The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an Oregon dispute between a father who wants to circumcise his 13-year-old son against the wishes of the boy’s mother.

The case now goes back to an Oregon trial judge to determine whether the boy wants to undergo the procedure.

James Boldt converted to Judaism and says his son wants to be circumcised for religious reasons.

But his ex-wife, Lia Boldt, claims that her son is afraid to tell his father that he does not want to undergo the procedure.

Circumcision, constantly under attack from reformers as barbaric, is a perennially hot topic, and this is not the first time we’ve broach adult, or at least young adult, circumcision on the blog. It doesn’t take a First Amendment expert to recognize how significant a case this could end up being.

“It is not going too far out on a limb to come to the conclusion that this case prevents freedom of religion, and is an invasion of privacy,” Rabbi Yonah writes.

Man, high school is bad enough. Imagine how embarrassing it would be if the lawsuit your father filed to remove your foreskin—SFW—made it all the way to the Supreme Court and was talked about in major papers and on NPR, maybe even someday referenced in other cases like Cartman v. Broflovski, a clip of which is after the jump.