Neonatal male genital mutilation should be made illegal in developed nations

Thank you for the invitation, Spotchman. I am glad you extended the invitation and I will do my best to argue for the side of con in this debate.Let me begin by making sure I properly understand what is under discussion. The proposition under debate is:"Neonatal male genital mutilation should be made illegal in developed nations" I suppose a term like "circumcision" would have been less loaded then "mutilation", but I don't think this will be much of a detriment to my argument. I think the abbreviation to MGM is appropriate, so I will use it as well. I. A Note on What Needs to be Shown by PROTwo things are currently true in developed nations: MGM is legal, and MGM is being practiced. PRO will need to establish that MGM should be made illegal in developed nations. I suppose this entails that MGM should not be practiced in developed nations either. If PRO does not wish to be committed to this claim, I would expect an argument to establish why not.I on the other hand may hold the position that MGM should be legal, even though it should not be practiced. There are many things that we consider to be ethically wrong, or that should not be practiced, yet we do not have laws against them, or have actually repealed laws against them. For example, we generally agree that lying, adultery, and insulting someone else should not be done in developed nations. However for a variety of reasons we do not think that these should be made illegal in all circumstances. I am not saying that I am indeed committed to the position that MGM should not be practiced but legal. I am merely pointing it out because pro will have to show not only that MGM should not be practiced, but that above and beyond, it should be made illegal. Additionally, I want to note that FGM is currently both illegal and not practiced in developed nations. By introducing both abbreviations, I suspect that PRO will be making an argument based on an analogy between the two. In a somewhat preemptive fashion, I would like to point out that this difference might be significant to an argument involving MGM and FGM. II. A Question about the Scope of the Debate Furthermore, I take it to be the case that "developed nations" are only those which have some form of democratic governance. I also take it to be the case that democracies out to generally enact laws in agreement with the view of the majority of the people. This leaves open one important question concerning the content of this debate:Is PRO arguing that MGM should be made illegal by virtue of convincing the majority of people in developed nations, but that the law should not be enacted until a clear majority consensus has been reached?orIs PRO arguing that MGM should be made illegal regardless of the majority view of people in developed nations, and that the law should be enacted with disregard to the majority view? I find myself in a similar position. Am I expected to argue that a majority of people should be against a ban on MGM, but that we should pass laws in accord with the majority, or that an MGM ban should be illegal, regardless of what the majority of the people believe?Since I accepted the challenge, I do feel committed to argue for either claim, but I would appreciate some clarification from PRO. I would, however, reject the terms of the debate if PRO is allowed to maintain that a ban should be enacted only if a majority is for it, but that CON must argue against a ban even in the face of the majority of the population.Please also note that, should we only be arguing for a view of letting the majority pass the law, this does not automatically end the debate or reduce it to a citing of surveys in various countries. The focus would then shift to arguing about what laws people in a democracy ought to want to enact. However, the arguments in this debate do shift somewhat depending on whether we are talking about legislating above people's heads or about convincing the majority. III. A Note about Ethics and PolicyIn the 5 points introduced by Pro, several ethical terms were introduced: Consent, pleasure, rights, pain, and some other related concepts. I do not believe that these terms trivially imply anything about policy. Rather, PRO will need to establish, or at least state, how and why these concepts have important implications for what the laws and policies should be. I am picking up on arguments making use of Kantian (or deontic) ethics, utilitarian/consequentialist considerations, and even some contractarian notions [1]. These three ethical systems are usually taken to be mutually exclusive, and they have a distinctly different understanding of what makes an action right or wrong, or what constitutes a harm, and what the resultant laws should be. It would be important for PRO to establish if his argument is supposed to bea) disjunctive - showing that there is a number of ethical systems acceptable for policy making in "developed nation," and under any of these systems MGM should be illegal, orb) based on one of the ethical theories. In this case, PRO would have to first establish that one of these theories is indeed the one and only view which should be used to generate laws in developed nations, and that under this view MGM should be made illegalWhat I do not take to be a legitimate move is to create an amalgamation of arguments from various theories without properly distinguishing between them. Although I suppose I must establish this by specifically showing how the various claims would undercut each other based on the underlying assumption, and then additionally provide considerations why some could be defeated on their own. I merely wish to point this out in anticipation of the argument on behalf of PRO.Here is the bottom line I want to get to: I do not think this argument should be predominantly about whether 1-5 are true. This argument should predominantly be about whether 1-5 are sufficient for passing a law against MGM. (I take this to exclude the 'and should therefore be made illegal' in 1. That is of course what is under discussion)IV. Definitions and some Granted Premises In other words, I am already granting that1*. Neonatal male genital mutilation permanently removes healthy, functional tissue without consent I agree to the totality of this statement as I take any removal of non-healthy non-functional tissue to be something that is not included in the definition of MGM. Actually, in order for this to work, I'd like to propose the following changes to the definition of MGM:Neonatal male genital mutilation (MGM): The removal, shortly after birth, of the healthy, functional male foreskin. Neonatal female genital mutilation (FGM): The removal, shortly after birth, of the healthy, functional female clitoris and clitoral hood.Now 1* is almost true by definition, except for the caveat about consent. 2*. That neonatal male genital mutilation can reduce sexual pleasure in later years.(I don't in fact know whether 2 is true, but I don't care to get involved in the details, except that the degree of reduced pleasure might be important later on. Also, note that I am only granting 2*. It seems hard to establish that MGM does in fact reduce sexual pleasure for everyone. In fact, this is necessarily false, as there may well be men that live entirely asexual celibate lives, in which case there would of course be no difference, even if their entire penis had been removed.)5. That neonatal male genital mutilation can cause numerous complications. (Again, the only interesting question here is one of prevalence and severity. But the fact that it can cause this, as any medical procedure seems trivially true) V. Let's Roll I'm out of characters ;). Depending on where PRO will place the emphasis, my opening statement will establish a more definitive position--------------------[1] http://en.wikipedia.org...; http://en.wikipedia.org...; http://en.wikipedia.org...