Brian Earp gets angry about the prosecution of a mother who allowed her 10 year old to get a tatt:
The truly troubling part involves a deep inconsistency in Georgia law regarding parental consent in general. This point can be made by offering a stark point of contrast. It is perfectly OK, under Georgia law, for a parent to consent to the surgical removal of her son’s foreskin, before he is able to form words or express an opinion, in a medically unnecessary, irreversible procedure which I have argued elsewhere is deeply immoral and should be banned. Tattoos? No way. Invasive, medically useless, nonconsensual genital surgery? Go right ahead.
And there's a Biblical bar on tattoos as well, for good measure:
"Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the Lord."
When you read the fundamentalist defense against tattoos, you also can't help noticing the rationale:
[God] spoke these words in Genesis 1:31,"And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day." When the Lord created the human body, He pronounced that the way He created it was very good.
So why forbid superficial mutilating by tattoo but demand it by permanently altering a key part of a man's body, the genitals? In a manner that, unlike tattoos, permanently scars a part of the body that provides intense physical pleasure. The double-standard is insane.
The Dish 