Israeli woman fined for not circumsizing her son.

[Tiberius]

Now who's making a straw man argument?

Go look up the meaning of the term "straw man argument". I never implied that your argument was that the average man in the UK or US should be circumcised. I was making an additional point of my own.

Tib, parents are allowed and have every right to make decisions that other parents will necessarily disagree with, that's what makes it the right of the parents to decide. I strongly believe that it should be the rights of the parents to decide whether to immunize their children, I know of two parents who didn't and in both cases their children got measles (but lived), and I recognize the benefits to immunization - and if I had children, I would have them immunized - but at the end of the day I fundamentally believe it's for the parents to decide and no one should be disadvantaged for choosing to do one thing or the other.

I agree with you to an extent, however putting a child in harm's way is child abuse. Cutting off a piece of a child may not harm them, but it is unnecessary at their age. Unless you think there are children out there having sex and getting HIV through their foreskins, or that parents don't bathe their children and ensure that they are clean.

I didn't give you a straw man argument. My argument is that infection is far more likely with a forsekin, yours was that (essentially) cleaning the forseskin will negate the risks.

It was a straw man argument because I used the word clean and you changed it to "sterilised", which I never said, hence you were arguing against a point I never even made. Yes though, keeping a foreskin clean will prevent infection as much as circumcision might on the grand scale of things.

On a website called "circumstitions"? Oh I'm so sure they're non-biased. One look at their homepage shows their agenda is a strong as NAMBLA - what if I posted a link to NAMBLA stating that the effects of paederasty are only positive?

So the answer to my question of whether you would read mine us a resounding no then.

If you had bothered to read past the domain name, you would realise that the studies are simply collected on that site, they were not performed by the site. A study by professionals does not somehow lose its credibility because it is posted on an activist site. I didn't link to the studies directly because there were a lot of them and I was on my phone.

I am glad though that at least your low level of intellectual integrity was exposed. If you want a debate, you should be polite enough to read your opponent's evidence, not simply dismiss it for no legitimate reason.

It's not the only benefit - and again, the WHO recommend it in 3rd world countries as a viable option in the fight against AIDS, why would you dismiss its benefits 'here'?

Because 'here' we have access to clean water, to doctors, to good healthcare, and the percentage of AIDS infected people is much much lower, that's why. We also have no problem understanding why we need to take precautions such as condoms and properly cleaning our private areas. The two situations are not even remotely comparable.