Sex and the Circumcised

(the following article appeared in the book Everything You Know About Sex is Wrong, 2004)

By Diane Petryk-Bloom

Want her to TOTALLY want it, TOTALLY need it and TOTALLY love it? Want to have her thinking of you instead of thinking of England? Men who want more sex, listen up. She needs to like it better and she'll like it better if you realize what's missing – your foreskin.

As you read this, at least 100,000 men (1) across America are taping, tying and tugging their penises to stretch new foreskin. Most lost their foreskins in infancy when they were circumcised, but somewhere along the line they discovered sex without a foreskin just isn't what nature intended.

In the uncircumcised man, the sexually aroused penis peeks from foreskin, then bursts full-out, sending ripples of skin back on the shaft. Those waves of stretching and retreating foreskin give the male one the most exquisite sensations in all sexual experience. That's because foreskin is the most important sensory tissue of thepenis. (2) Pleasurable sensations provided by a foreskin are "so incredibly great," in fact, that "no man should miss out on them," says author Jeffrey O'Hara, a circumcised-but-restored – as far as can be -- male.

That, in itself, isn't enough to motivate most men to worry about developing new foreskin. Here's what is: she needs it. It's the key to pleasuring your woman. Get it, get her more often.

Here's why: Circumcised men have lost considerable sensory tissue. Important nerve endings – gone. Some hate the idea. But many still say they have all the pleasure they can stand, so what's the problem? They have perfectly serviceable erections. They have orgasms and ejaculations. The problem is how they get there.

Researchers have recently discovered that the mechanism of arousal and intercourse is entirely different for the circumcised man and the foreskin-intact man. Whether or not a circumcised male has any problems, recent anatomical studies show his partner probably will.

In 1996, Dr. John Taylor and colleagues in the pathology department at the University of Manitoba, decided to assess the type and amount of tissue missing from the adult circumcised penis. (Incredibly, humans have been trimming penises since 2000-something B.C. (3) and no one had yet assessed the damage!)

THE RIDGED BAND

Taylor found an elastic-like band of mucosal tissue at the tip of the foreskin. He called it the ridged band (4). It teems with specialized nerve endings – similar to those on the fingers and lips.

The head of the penis, or glans, by contrast, and contrary to popular belief, is fairly insensitive. When the penis is relaxed, the ridged band narrows over its tip like a drawn duffle bag. Sexual arousal dilates the band, sliding it back past the glans and onto the shaft, where it rolls up and down during intercourse. The rolling and stretching stimulates the erogenous nerves in the band to fire off sensations of pleasure. (5)

From an evolutionary perspective, the object of sexual stimulation in the male is to build up contractions in the genital musculature. Kristen O'Hara, with her husband Jeff O'Hara, explains in her 2001 book, Sex As Nature Intended It, that it is these alternate tensing and relaxing actions that lead to orgasm and ejaculation of sperm.

They point out that Josephine Lowndes Sevely's seven-year study comparing male and female genitalia revealed highly erogenous tissue equivalent to the female clitoris is located in the core of the penis through the entire length of the shaft. Only the foreskin is positioned to stimulate it by natural massaging action. The circumcised man has to reach for equivalent stimulation in an awkward, unnatural way. Sometimes he has difficulty reaching orgasm. Other times he may not be able to extend intercourse more than a few seconds. In either case, his female partner suffers.

"It is important to understand how muscular contractions can bring on orgasm because the intact (natural) man and the circumcised man induce them differently," the O'Haras write. "… the means they use to create these contractions affect their thrusting movements and rhythms.

"The design of the natural penis indicates that nature intended for pleasure and orgasm to be induced by actions taking place mostly in the upper area of the penis. However, for the circumcised penis, the upper penis mechanisms and responses have been drastically altered and do not function the way nature intended. Consequently, the circumcised male is left to improvise alternative or supplementary means to attain orgasm. It is use of these odd varieties or orgasm-building (pleasure seeking) techniques that causes him to thrust much differently from the intact man, and which his female partner finds frustrating and disrupting to her pleasuring needs." And sometimes downright painful.

Marsha Goudreau (name disguised), a Michigan woman whose late husband of more than 20 years was uncircumcised, who later experienced sex with circumcised men, said she now knows her husband's foreskin was a blessing for both of them.

"The nice thing that happens is that the gliding back and forth stimulates the head of the penis without irritating it," she said. (6) "The shaft moves in and out of that glove, which pleasures the woman without painful friction. And if you're not having intercourse for some reason, the foreskin makes a hand job a lot easier."

In technical terms: "Mucosal surfaces of the glans and foreskin move back and forth across the mucosal surfaces of the labia and vagina, providing nontraumantic sexual stimulation for both male and female."

'BEST THING THIS LIFETIME'

This mucous membrane-to-mucous membrane contact provides natural lubrication necessary for sexual relations and prevents both the dryness responsible for painful intercourse and the chafing and abrasions which allow entry of sexually transmitted diseases, both viral and bacterial." (7)

Yet couples with a circumcised man need not despair. Foreskin restoration offers reparations. Recovered glans will soften again. Jeff O'Hara's message for circumcised men: "Restoring your foreskin is the best thing that's going to happen to you in this lifetime." Kristen's message: "From the woman's sexual perspective, the restored penis is virtually equivalent to the natural penis in every respect."

There are surgical and non-surgical methods of restoration. O'Hara opted for a graft of skin from his scrotum. It has the advantage of having muscle tissue able to provide that thrill of stretch upon erection. Non-surgical restoration involves pulling what is left of flaccid skin at the base of the penis when it is not erect, and exerting a tugging force to stretch it. Several simple devices have been invented for this purpose. (8)

One is simply taping drawn up skin with a clip applied to the end of the tape and tugging force applied by an elastic band around the waist. "It's cheap and works well enough," said David Steinburg (name disguised) from his home in the midwest. "While there's still a ways to go, there is no question that the regrowth of some skin has made a real difference in feeling," he said, "and I can only imagine what it must be like for those fortunate enough to have avoided circumcision in the first place."

Ron Low of Chicago thought taping lacked something in elegance, so he invented a cone-shaped attachment that pulls naturally after skin is inserted. Obversion, the tendency of skin to roll back, keeps it in place. Low said one can expect to add about one inch per year if the tugger is worn 12 hours a day. His progress with his TLCTugger is documented on his website TLCTugger.com).

Low said he's sold more than 2,000 with "nothing but positive feedback."

The Joy of Uncircumcising by James Bigelow, 1995, is the complete guide. (9)

Whatever method, the object is to restore enough skin to cover the head of the relaxed penis, or glans, such as happens naturally when the penis is uncircumcised. Complete coverage, which the O'Haras advise, allows the penis to maintain its naturally moist, softly-stiff characteristic. (The glans of the circumcised penis are continually exposed, and as a result, can become hardened or keratinized.)

While foreskin restoration can replace this protective covering, merely stretching the skin cannot restore the special orgasmic triggers and glands that were cut and eliminated. Especially the very sensitive frenulum. The frenulum is the connecting tissue of the foreskin and shaft. Structurally, it is similar to the frenulum that connects the tongue to the base of the mouth. In the same way that frenulum controls the tongue, researchers envison the penile frenulum controls thrusting. It's on the underside of the shaft, or on top of an erect penis when a man is lying on his back. It, too, is highly enervated, erogenous tissue.

"Often only a remnant of the frenulum is left after circumcision, if it is not also removed," says anti-circumcision crusader Marilyn Milos. "Many circumcised men consider it their 'G-spot,' but only because their 'G-area,' the ridged band and frenular delta, has been removed." (10)

During sex, there is a way to compensate for that loss, Jeff O'Hara found. "The ridged band of the foreskin and the skin of the nipples are comprised of the same specialized nerve tissue called 'rete ridges.' Nipple skin abounds with Meissner's corpuscles (erotically responsive touch-sensitive nerves), like those found in the foreskin and frenulum.

"When you have your partner twiddle your nipples during intercourse, combined with the increased pleasure experienced after restoration, I reckon that it heightens your sexual feelings to those experienced by the genitally intact man when his penis alone is stimulated during intercourse…During this activity, the levels of ecstasy are so magnificent, I don't feel cheated in any way, even though I'm missing the nerves of the ridged ban."

Sex as Nature Intended It came about after Kristen O'Hara experienced both natural and circumcised sex and tried to make sense of the difference. While happily married to Jeff, she came to realize that foreskin is what's missing millions of bedrooms across America -- bedrooms where sex is unfulfilling, uncomfortable and/or avoided. Her personal experience (11) and comparisons led to attempts to discover if she was alone in her feelings. She wasn't!

Surveys of about 138 women showed almost all women preferred the natural sex. It was the difference between not being able to get enough and "There, that'll hold you for a few days." Sitcoms spend a lot of time on male jokes about pursuing sex in the face of expected feminine refusal because it reflects the situation in the real world, she said. Women in their 20s are often gung ho, regardless; in their 30s, it's okay, she said, but much beyond that age their interest falls off with their lessening vaginal lubrication and the built-up resentment of sex that's been too often uncomfortable and unsatisfying.

Female partners of circumcised men become aroused, crave the sensation of penetration and enjoy orgasm just as much as partners of intact men. But they express dissatisfaction with the overall experience of sexual relations. Kristen was no different. She loved her husband and they were compatible, but their relationship wasn't good sexually.

"Our love lacked depth," she writes, "the kind of depth that exists when a couple has a deeply satisfying, exquisitely delicious, sensuous, sexual interconnectedness." Because sex with Jeff was annoying, even though desired, Kristen drifted back into her uncircumcised lover's bed. "During our rendezvous, I couldn't help but notice that his penis felt much more sensuous inside me; it felt infinitely better, deliciously better, indescribably better.

A PERFECT UNION

"In characterizing the differences… I would say the circumcised experience is like being repeatedly penetrated in an annoying way, even though simultaneously there is pleasure. And the penis feels too hard, almost foreign-like – you want it, but don't want it, at the same time, driven onward only in hopes of achieving orgasm, the sooner the better. Whereas, with natural, the vagina totally surrenders to the soft sensuousness of lingering ecstasy, as it hungrily caresses and lovingly responds to the erotic movements of the softly-stiff penis, and the penis adores and gently strokes the vagina in return.

"Like two halves of a perfect whole, each organ swoons and sighs to a passionate intermingling… "With no holding back, you TOTALLY want it, you TOTALLY need it, and you TOTALLY love it."

One explanation: Since the natural penis tends to stay more deeply embedded in the vagina using short strokes, it brings the man's pubic area in frequent contact with the woman's clitoral mound, allowing her clitoris to be pressure-pleasured more often, and at a consistent rhythmical rate throughout much of the intercourse experience. Not only does the circumcised man make longer strokes to stimulate his pleasure areas, he needs to pause, often outside the vagina, to let the nerve endings recharge.

The natural man's penis retreats into its foreskin, not having to withdraw from the vagina. Jeff O'Hara said you can witness the longer strokes and withdrawals in x-rated videos with circumcised men. In fact, he said, he watched a video made of John Bobbitt performing sex. Bobbitt is the man whose wife cut off his penis in a fit of rage. Doctors reattached the organ, but Bobbitt lost nerve connections.

He performs just like a circumcised man must, O'Hara said, "Pull out, rest, come in fast. Like pile-driving with punishing blows." Even if the woman can tolerate it, that technique precludes rhythmic build-up for the clitoris.

In her best-selling book, How to Have An Orgasm…As Often as You Want, Rachel Swift says a lack of consistent rhythm is one of the chief causes of a woman's failure to climax.

"If the pace is broken, so's the ascent to orgasm." Why do SO MANY women fake orgasm? Because SO MANY men are circumcised.

Women know they're not going to climax the way he's doing it…and they're taking a battering. They might just as well fake it and hope he gets it over with soon. Often the best you can do with circumcised sex is pleasure the man and woman separately, in succession, rather than simultaneously.

"It was like we were using each other's body to masturbate against," Jeff said of his marital sex before he restored, "which is not the same as making love. Lovers totally abandon their individual egos, their individual awareness, and become a union of pleasuring."

Here's a sampling of comments from Kristen O'Hara's survey respondents:

My circumcised husband was totally engrossed in satisfying his own sexual needs; therefore, he pounded and banged as if he were having intercourse with a non-feeling person.

"It feels so good to have the feeling of a man's foreskin in my vagina…it glides easily.

Once a natural penis is in your vagina, you wish it could stay forever.

My natural partner kept more constant pressure in my whole genital area during intercourse. I felt like he was in sync with me… I had more time to relax, and I would always orgasm before it was over, so afterwards I felt content.

My sexual experiences with three natural men were extraordinary in the gentleness, sensuality and mutuality.

Natural men have a more laid-back approach. They don't seem to feel as rushed or pressed to achieve orgasm. They seem to enjoy the act rather than the resulting orgasm.

There is definitely more clitoral stimulation with natural. Sometimes it's (circumcised sex) too much work for too little reward. When it's over I think to myself, "thank God he finally came."

I have noticed that the vagina is much more accepting of the natural penis Once the head of the natural penis is at the opening of the vagina, it just kind of naturally slides in. I've often said to myself after one of these circumcised encounters: I would have been better off masturbating. With my natural man, I always glow after intercourse, but with circumcised men, I couldn't wait to get dressed and get away from them. I never glowed.

The visual effect of seeing an impending erection just starting to peek out of its foreskin is just so much sexier.

I never made the connection between this feeling of hostility and circumcised sex until now.

O'Hara's research was first published in the British Journal of Urology in 1999. Best-selling author Dr. Christiane Northrup (12) credits the O'Hara's research for helping her fully understand the reasons for the design of the penis and foreskin.

"I always felt that the male foreskin, one of the most richly enervated and hyperelastic pieces of tissue in the male body, is there for a reason, she wrote in an article for her newsletter, Health Wisdom for Women (10) Volume 8, No. 6, June 2001 "Until recently, I didn't know exactly what that reason was. But now thanks to Kristen O'Hara's well-researched book…I finally understand the reasons for the design of the penis and foreskin and how this design ensures optimal penile function, including the organ's ability to satisfy the female sexually."

"O'Hara makes a compelling argument that circumcised intercourse may frustrate the primordial subconscious that seems to know 'real sex ain't this way.'" Northrup writes. "She also suggested that each circumcised experience has the potential to build-up negative memory imprints so that over time, repeated sexual encounters with the same partner may lead to , negative feeling between the two that carry over into everyday life."

As an obstetrician-gynecologist, Northrup said, she performed hundreds of circumcisions. While she stops short of saying she regrets doing them, she does say it's past time to re-think the practice. She reported elsewhere that when she would tell parents at hospital-based childbirth classes that circumcision need not be done, her invitations to such classes were withdrawn. She quotes obstetrics colleague Dr. George Denniston, co-author of Doctor's Reexamine Circumcision:

"Circumcision violates the first tenet of medical practice: 'first, do no harm.' According to modern medical ethics, parents do not have the right to consent to a procedure that is not in their son's best interest. The removal of normal, important part of the male sexual organ is not in their son's best interest."

Jews, Muslims and a few other groups circumcise as part of their religious practice. But, as a nation, we do not allow parents to impose their religious practice on children to the extent that it does physical harm. Blood transfusions, for instance, are often imposed by court-order for children whose parents do not approve for religious reasons. Should genital mutilation (13) be any different?

From a world-wide perspective, the non-circumcised state is the norm for males. Most Europeans and Orientals do not circumcise.

Wrongful circumcision attorney David Lewellyn said he attended a conference in Padua, Italy last fall and told a 35-year-old Italian pediatrician that Americans circumcise about 65 percent of all boys. "You're kidding!" she said.

Although circumcision rates are dropping here, it is estimated that about 60 percent of all newborn males in America are still being cut. If you're an American male between age 25 and 45, the probability is very high that you were circumcised. Newborn circumcision rates in the U.S. climbed after World War II and peaked at about 80-90 percent somewhere between 1970 and 1980.

If you are older or younger, chances are still good that if you were in an American nursery you lost your foreskin. In our cultural acceptance of circumcising males, we keep company with countries like Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Somalia and the Congo. Some circumcise newborns, most do it at older ages, as part of religious practice. The United States is the only circumcising country that, generally, has no religious pretense. Circumcisions are usually performed on newborns in hospitals for aesthetic preference, hygienic theory or for nor reason at all.

Many parents simply acquiesce to circumcision when the physician offers it, without asking questions. "If it's offered, it must be recommended," seems to be the prevailing view. It's familiar. It's the accepted norm. Several groups, such as NORM (National Organization of Restoring Men), NOHARMM (National Organization to Halt the Abuse and Routine Mutilation of Males) and NOCIRC have formed to fight the practice, but it is entrenched. For many it's a matter of "like father, like son." Males who cannot accept that they are less than perfect, perpetuate the practice. "Recognizing male circumcision as a mistake reflects on circumcised males." (14) Others, doctors and mothers, may be in denial as well.

American's willingness to conform and disinclination to inquire deeply is another. Parents are usually unaware of the extent of the surgery. The amount of skin amputated results in the loss of about one third or more of the penile shaft skin system. Adult foreskin is about two and a half inches long. It's double layered, so when unfolded would be about the size of a 3 x 5 card, enough skin to hold millions of cells and nerves.

The often described "snip of skin" is considered a major amputaton by some. It is usually done without anesthesia. Milos, who first witnessed circumcision as a student nurse, went on to make a video of the operation and show it to expecting parents. She was told it was too much for parents to see. "Perhaps then," Milos responded, "its too much for the baby to endure." "We didn't learn anything about foreskins or circumcision in medical school," said Dr. Paul Fliess. (16) "I watched one, that was it." They were taught infants do not feel pain, he said, which has been shown to be an absurd notion.

Taylor and colleagues who discovered the Ridged Band, have also noted "the current tendency to eliminate the prepuce from anatomy textbooks."

How it became thus is no mystery. Circumcision got its first big jump-start in this country in the late 19th century when doctors decided masturbation was harmful. A boy with foreskin would have to retract it to urinate, so, they reasoned, he would be more likely to learn to give himself pleasure by self-manipulation. Cutting the foreskin off as a remedy became the rage. In 1888, John Kellogg, of corn flakes fame, wrote a book blaming masturbation for 31 ailments, and identified as symptoms of masturbation things like shyness and insomnia.

Soon, circumcision was advocated for infants to prevent, rather than cure, masturbation.Here are excerpts from medical journals of the late 1800's: There can be no doubt of (masturbation's) injurious effect, and of the proneness to practice it on the part of children with defective brains. Circumcision should always be practiced. It may be necessary to make the genitals so sore by blistering fluids that pain results from attempts to rub the parts (17)

In consequence of circumcision the epithelial covering of the glans becomes dry, hard…the sensibility of the glans is diminished, but not sufficiently to interfere with the copulative function of the organ or to constitute an objection... It is well authenticated that the foreskin...is a fruitful cause of the habit of masturbation in children... I conclude that the foreskin is detrimental to health, and that circumcision is a wise measure of hygiene. (18)

Great Britain joined in the masturbation hysteria, as did Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Those countries have since rejected arguments for circumcision as fallacious. Dr. Benjamin Spock advocated circumcision in 1946. He reversed himself in 1976. (19)

The British circumcision rate peaked at something more than 30 percent, then, by the 1950s, it fell dramatically. By the time Princess Diana gave birth to Prince William, it was less than 1 percent. Prince Charles was circumcised, but Diana insisted the young princes be left intact (20).

In her case, the fact that the National Health Service dropped coverage of the procedure probably wasn't a deciding factor. For the majority of the Brits, it may have been the biggest one.

By the 1930s, even those who ate corn flakes accepted that masturbation wasn't harmful, but by then circumcision was going strong.

Since Jews circumcised for religious reasons, some Jews promoted it for health reasons, too, applying to all, so Jews wouldn't be singled out by the practice.

Doctors latched onto the next promulgated theory: circumcision was more hygienic. After awhile claims were made for its cure or prevention of a host of diseases from epilepsy to insomnia. These arguments were debunked one by one, but circumcision still has its proponents. They often tout penile cancer and cervical cancer prevention as benefits of circumcision.

Penile cancer is exceedingly rare and preventing it is not a reason for depriving millions of their bodily integrity and sexual birthright.

Women with uncircumcised partners do not get more cervical cancer. Studies that have shown such links have been seriously flawed. (21)

Recently AIDS prevention has been suggested as justification for circumcision. This flies in the face of facts. The United States and certain African countries that circumcise have the highest rates of HIV infection.

Some wonder, might it not all come down to an innate human compulsion to mutilate, especially the sexual organs? Or a drive to control others' sexual behavior. Coleman reports on one American woman's suspicion that her inconceivable genital mutilation at the hands doctor might be linked to circumcision. Retribution?

Circumcision is known to harm the bond between mother and son. Does the circumcision approving parent ever think ahead to the day when the boy is seven or eight and wants to know what was done to him, and why? (22) Does the rise in circumcision in this country correlate with its rise in crime? These questions are being asked. It seems that we've gone through a century and a half of searching for a justifications for circumcision, seeing them debunked one by one, creating new ones and seeing those debunked.

Now we are waking up to the fact that circumcising has been damaging sexual organs, sexual performance and sexual relationships. But, in fact, this is something that has been known from antiquity. We just forgot it. In Marked in Your Flesh – Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern American, author Leonard Glick painstaking recounts the history of circumcision. It begins with Chapter 17 of Genesis. God makes promises to Abraham and puts forth the inexplicable requirement that "every male among you shall be circumcised." "You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin. And that shall be the sign of the covenant between Me and you. And throughout the generations, every male among you shall be circumcised at the age of eight days." Why? No one knows. No one single author wrote the Torah. The Bible includes the essential feature of the Genesis 17 narrative, but eliminates mention of circumcision.

Historically, one function of circumcision, for Jews, was that it identified with whom a Jewess may have sexual intercourse and therefore it served to preserve national identity. (23) Jews in the Roman Empire knew that others looked down on circumcision. Some did not have their sons circumcised and some tried foreskin stretching to restore themselves even back then.

The ancient Greeks and their Hellenistic successors considered the "ideal" prepuce to be long, tapered and well proportioned. Removing it was mutilation. (24) Philo of Alexandria wrote in the first century that circumcision served to excise "pleasures that bewitch the mind." He may have been the first to state that circumcision decreases sexual sensation, Glick suggests.

Later, in the 12th Century, Moses Maimonides, Jewish physician and community leader, wrote, with regard to circumcision: "One of the reasons for it is, in my opinion, the wish to bring about a decrease in sexual intercourse and a weakening of the organ in question…The fact that circumcision weakens the faculty of sexual excitement and sometimes perhaps diminishes the pleasure in indubitable."

He adds: "The Sages, may their memory be blessed, have explicitly stated: 'it is hard for a woman with whom an uncircumcised man has had sexual intercourse to separate from him.' In my opinion this is the strongest of the reasons for circumcision. "…because his foreskin has been removed from him, and the power of his member has been diminished, he has no strength to lie with many lewd women. "Women who have had an opportunity to make comparisons, know quite well the difference between circumcised and intact lovers. But it's all for the best, since Jewish men don't waste time and energy trying to satisfy women sexually." Maimonides understood that the foreskin is a highly sensitive source of sexual pleasure. His words could be slid in between the comments of women responding to O'Hara's survey and no one would spot the 800-year gulf between them. Maimonides wrote:

"An attractive woman will court the man who is uncircumcised...and lie against his breast with great passion, for he thrusts inside her a long time because of the foreskin, which is a barrier against ejaculation in intercourse. Thus she feels pleasure and reaches orgasm first. When an uncircumcised man sleeps with her and then resolves to return home, she brazenly grasps him and says to him 'Come back, make love to me.' This is because of the pleasure that she finds in intercourse with him, from the sinews of his testicles – sinew of iron – and from his ejaculation –that of a horse – which he shoots like an arrow into her womb. They are united without separating, and he makes love twice and three times in one night, yet the appetite is not filled…

"But when a circumcised man desires the beauty of a woman, and cleaves to his wife, or another woman comely in appearance, he will find himself performing his task quickly, emitting his seed as soon as he inserts his crown…He has an orgasm first…She has no pleasure from him…and it would be better for her if he had not known her and not drawn near to her, for he arouses her passion to no avail, and she remains in a state of desire for her husband, ashamed and confounded, while the seed is still in her reservoir. She does not have an orgasm once a year…." (25)

Pro-circumcision pediatrician Dr. Edgar Schoen, Clinical Professor in Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, (26) has lamented that some Jewish boys are now intact thanks to "some ill-advised back-to-nature movements." Foreskin might have been useful in pre-historic times, he says, when men where running naked through thorn bushes and brambles" but now is no more useful than an appendix or wisdom teeth. Compelling medical data much of it accumulated in the past two decades, he says, have "conclusively" shown that a boy circumcised as a newborn has multiple lifetime health advantages compared to one with an "intact" foreskin.

Even if the various health benefits touted by Schoen were true, and they are debated, medical ethicist Margaret Somerville says that wouldn't justify circumcision.

"A common error made by those who want to justify infant male circumcision on the basis of medical benefits," she writes, "is that they believe that as long as some such benefits are present, circumcision can be justified as therapeutic, in the sense of preventive health care. This is not correct.

"A medical-benefits or 'therapeutic' justification requires that overall the medical benefits should outweigh the risks and harms of the procedure required to obtain them, that this procedure is the only reasonable way to obtain these benefits, and that these benefits are necessary to the well-being of the child.

"None of these conditions is fulfilled for routine infant male circumcision. If we view a child's foreskin as having a valid function, we are no more justified in amputating it than any other part of the child's body unless the operation is medically required treatment and the least harmful way to provide that treatment. "(27)

Somerville said she once accepted circumcision without a second thought. After studying it, she came to the conclusion it is "technically criminal assault." "Once you decide that circumcision is not medically necessary, you take away the therapeutic intent. Take away therapeutic intent, and circumcision becomes an unjustified wounding."

Dr. Leo Sorger told ObGYN News readers circumcision, "removing normal healthy functioning tissue" violates the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 5) and the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child (Article 13). Schoen, unsurprisingly, also denies foreskin contributes to sexual pleasure.

What would he make of Maimonides?

JEWISH AUTHORS CITE HARM

Northrup: "I am not Jewish, (or Muslim), but I can assure you that many Jews are rethinking circumcision (I do not have any information about Muslims). As a matter of fact, two of the most well-researched and eloquent books on the harmful nature of circumcision have been written by Jewish men. I urge you to read Circumcision: The Hidden Trauma by Ronald Goldman Ph.D., (Vanguard, 1997) and Circumcision: An American Health Fallacy by Edward Wallenstein (Springer Publishing, 1980)."

Ronald Goldman can be reached at www.circumcision.org.info.htm

Restoring male David Steinburg is Jewish and despite his unhappiness with having been circumcised, he said he's not sure he could combat it for a newborn son in the face of family pressure.

"Many of the rituals of the Jewish community were developed as reminders of "separateness" and don't have any rationale otherthan ritual -- which is fine," he said. "I do think it would be healthy –but probably impossible -- for society to have something of a discussion about why keeping a foreskin is a good idea. But let's face it -- how do you get Americans to talk about sexual pleasure within the context of a newborn? It ties in too many things even open-minded people are squeamish about: parents don't want to think about their child's sexuality, especially that early on (if ever).

"And since it's too late for the (Jewish) father making the decision, there must be a reluctance to come to grips with the fact that his own experience may have been diminished by something his parents did before he had any consciousness at all."

"Someone must start," Jeff O'Hara asserts. As for Muslims – circumcision is not mentioned in the Koran. According to Islamic websites, "there is no compulsion to circumcision." (28) But Sami Aldeeb found otherwise. A Muslim lawyer based in Switzerland, Aldeeb would certainly call the circumcision he underwent at age 11 compulsive. Note his discussion of anger, terror, and thoughts of suicide:

"One of the issues rarely discussed in the topic of circumcision is the relation between its damage and the age at which it is done," he writes. "I was circumcised at the age of 11, during the summer break after 5th grade. "Growing through my childhood uncircumcised, gave me the opportunity to discover myself while intact," Aldeeb writes. "I was curious about my body and the changes that were happening at that age; so I became very conscious about my foreskin. I knew what circumcision was from an incident where a neighbor's kid (aged 10) ran from his circumciser, his brother who witnessed the circumcision through a window was terrified about how they tied his brother with a robe to the bed and about all the screams and blood.

"I asked about the circumciser, how he looked, I wanted to run away if he ever showed up at our door. I remember once my father jokingly telling me I will be circumcised, and my mother asking me why I did not want to have it done. I thought the subject would be brought up in front of me one day.

"The dreadful day came when my father told me I had to go with him for some tests at the hospital. I did not know what tests, but went along to acrowded local hospital. …Here a male janitor-nurse pulled open my hospital robe and made a quick mark on my penis. I was then given a shot and carried by that person to the operating table. The last I remember was a nurse arranging "things" on a tray. I never saw the face of the doctor as it took few seconds for me to go under full anesthesia.

"I woke up in a bed with my father beside me, he asked me if I knew whathappened, I pulled the blanket because I could feel the dry bandage againstmy raw glans. … I realized what had happened. …I felt stunned. I could not say a thing. Right then I thought about suicide.

"After I came back home I "surveyed the damage" and counted 10 stitches. My feeling was: now I am just like all of them.

"Years have passed and by the age of 16, I was having painful erections. The tension in the shaft skin used to make my erections very noticeable to me to the degree they cannot be ignored. They give me the sense that they have to be relieved or soothed. I confused the excessive tension on my frenulum with an urge for pleasure. At the age of 17 I severed my frenulum with a blade to relieve that tension. The tension was reduced, but the damage of the mutilation has become more noticeable.

"To show you how angry I was, I remember the day when my mutilator (doctor) died from a heart attack at the age of 44, on a nice summer day few years later.

"At the age of 33, I started to read about the subject on the Internet. I learned about foreskin restoration and tried a technique that worked for me. It was not the aesthetic results that I was looking for, it was the functionality, and that eliminated the premature ejaculation problem I had, just by having some loose skin during erection.

"Physiologically, the experience left me feeling mutilated, for no reason or benefit. It damaged the relation I had with my father, and affected myattitude toward my parents. It also affected my religious beliefs. The effort and pains thinking about the subject, reading literature, andattempting the restoration could have been better spent, if this has notbeen done. "

A few words about Islamic religion and circumcision. My understanding is that God created the human body in best image; why mutilate it? Islam prohibited practices that cause body harm, like tattoos; and prophet Muhammad himself did not undergo circumcision. At this day and age where we laugh at witch-doctors and feel sorry for children who were blinded at childhood to become good masseuse, we still give a wink about this topic." (29)

LAW GETS INVOLVED

In September 1996 the United States passed a law against female genital mutilation. Opponents of male circumcision are asking for the same. There is some tension with those who crusade against female mutilation, some of them believing male circumcision is much less harmful and fighting it less urgent. But circumcision opponents say all involuntary genital surgery is mutilation that should be stopped.

For now, we can expect that if legal prohibition comes, it will come first in Canada. Canadians are already being warned. In 1996 the Canadian Medical Association approved a code of ethics that instructs doctors to "refuse to participate in or support practices that violate basic human rights."

This suggests, Mark Jenkins writes, "that in the case of circumcision, parental preference should not override the child's physical rights to his body."(30) Canada's National Post newspaper, in February, 2001, reported the Association for Genital Integrity's preparations to challenge the ban on female genital mutilation in Canada's Criminal Code as being discriminatory against males, who are not given similar protection.

"Every day in this country a quarter of the boys that are born are having this procedure performed on them without their consent and without any medical need. We don't see why half of our society should be protected by a law and not the other half," said Dr. Arif Bhimji, a Newmarket emergency room physician.

In February, 2002, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan warned physicians against routine circumcision of newborn male infants and, among many words, essentially told doctor who will perform the surgeon based solely on parental preference, to consult their lawyers! (31) In her book The Ethical Canary, Somerville, a Canadian, argues physicians who undertake infant male circumcision could be legally liable for medical malpractice (civil liability in battery or negligence), which can result in an award of damages simply for carrying out the circumcision, even if it was competently performed (and many are botched with resulting horror stories of physical damage and death.) They could also, as explained, be charged with criminal liability for assault.

In both ethics and law, a physician has a primary obligation of personal care to the patient (not the parent). In France, journalist Michel Orcel has pointed out the absurdity of arguing over Muslim head-scarf law when "ritual circumcision is still an elective amputation done on a subject who cannot resist mentally or physically."

He says Article 16-3 of the French Civil Code is perfectly clear: "The physical integrity of a person cannot be violated except in cases of medical necessity. The consent of the person must be obtained beforehand except in cases where the person's condition necessitates a therapeutic intervention to which the person is incapable of giving consent..." In this country, attorney J. Steven Svoboda, a former Human RightsFellow at Harvard Law School, recently founded Attorneys for the Rights of the Child. "Our position is that circumcision is medical malpractice," he explains.

"The medical profession, which has perpetuated this tragicdisfigurement of baby boys' genitals, will now be challenged by anorganization of legal professionals." The courts are considering many cases. Samples: On July 22, 1995, a jury in Montgomery, Alabama, found Jackson Hospital and Clinic guilty of negligence in a case where a newborn was mistakenly circumcised against his mother's wishes. The minor plaintiff was awarded $65,000.

More recently a Suffolk County New York teen won an undisclosed settlement from a hospital and the doctor who circumcised him . He sued because his mother's permission was obtained while she was debilitated by the effects of a Caesarian section and painkillers – a common scenario.

"Never again can someone say that a young man who is dissatisfied with his circumcision as an infant is being frivolous when he objects to his mutilation and brings suit to obtain justice," said Llewellyn, his attorney.

Based in Georgia, Llewellyn's firm specializes "wrongful circumcision" and has handled about 20 cases, such as where the mother opposes a father's desire to have a son circumcised. "Doctors need to be sued," he said. "The only thing people seem to understand is lawsuits and money."

He believes it is women who need to take up this issue and defend their sons, he said.

"Fathers aren't going to do it because they won't acknowledge the wrong that has been done to them."

And the only way circumcision rate will be reversed, Kristen O'Hara contends, is to make people aware that women are the primary victims, since they are the ones who enduring discomfort, punishing blows, and lack of orgasm.

"The man suffers too, of course, because when women loseinterest in sex, men are deprived. And when it ultimately affects the love bond, and can lead to divorce, it's a tragedy for everyone."

Endnotes:
1. A conservative figure according to restoration activist Ron Low, Chicago.
2. Taylor, John, The Ridged Band website (http://research.cirp.org/abstr1.html)
3. The oldest documentary evidence for circumcision comes fromEgypt. Tomb artwork from the Sixth Dynasty (2345 - 2181 BC)shows men with circumcised penises……The examination of Egyptian mummies has found both circumcised and uncircumcised men. http://www.wikipedia.com/
4. Taylor, John, Lockwood, A.P., Taylor, A.J. "The prepuce: specialized mucosa of the penis and its loss to circumcision," British Journal of Urology, 1996, Vol. 77, pp. 291-295
5. O'Hara, Kristen and Jeffrey. Sex As Nature Intended It. Turning Point Publications, (Hudson, Mass.) 2002, p. 141.
6. See how the foreskin works in animation: http://www.circumstitions.com/Works.html
7. Human Sexuality: an Encyclopedia edited by Vern L Bullough and Bonnie Bullough New York: Garland Pub., 1994 p. 119-122.
8. Simple tape – a man stretches his shaft skin then tapes it in place and applies tension with a strap or string; devices such as the TugAhoy ( http://www.tugahoy.com/); RECAP method (recap_ez@hotmail.com) or (TLCTugger@Juno.com) Other options, surf
www.NORM-socal.org.
9. The full title is The Joy of Uncircumcising! Exploring History, Myths, Psychology, Restoration, Sexual Pleasure and Human Rights, 2nd Ed., by Jim Bigelow, Ph.D. Hourglass/pprbk. 1995.
10. She went on to found NOCIRC, the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers.
11. For more details see sexasnatureintendedit.com
12. Northrup is author of Women's Bodies, Women's Choices, 1998, The Wisdom of Menopause, 2003 and Mother-Daughter Wisdom, 2005.
13. O'Hara and others defend describing male circumcision as genital mutilation.
14. Goldman, Ron, Circumcision, The Hidden Trauma, How an American Cultural Practice Affects Infants and Ultimately Us All, Vanguard Publications, 1997, p 73.
15. For a complete discussion see Say No to Circumcision! 40 Compelling Reasons, by Thomas J. Ritter, MD, and George C. Denniston, MD. Second Edition. Hourglass Book Publishing, 1996)
16. Fleiss, with Frederick Hodges, has written "Nontherapeutic Circumcision Should Not Be Performed," American Medical News, vol. 38, no. 26 (July 17, 1995)
17. Angel, Money. Treatment Of Disease In Children. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston. 1887.
18. Jefferson C. Crossland, MD, "The Hygiene of Circumcision," New York Medical Journal, 1891. 19. Coleman, page 60. 20. Coleman, page 293.21. http://www.circumstitions.com/22. Coleman discusses the long-term psychological effects of circumcision on children and adults, p82-123.23. Glick, Leonard. Marked in Your Flesh, -Circumcision From Ancient Judea to Modern America, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 29.24. Glick, p. 3125. Glick, p. 6726. Schoen's pro-circumcision website is www.medicirc.org
27. Somerville, Margaret A. The Ethical Canary Science, Society and the Human Spirit, Viking/Penguin Canada, Toronto, hardcover, 344 pages (chapter 8, pp. 202-219); or www.intact.ca/canary.htm.
28. http://www.islamonline.net/askaboutislam
29. Aldeeb's homepage: http://go.to/nonviolence
30. Jenkins, Mark. "Separated at Birth - Did Circumcision Ruin Your Sex Life?" Men's Health July/August 1998.
31. For more legal cases see http://www.circumstitions.com/Law.html

The following related essay is by Deane Jordan, author of 1,001 Facts Somebody Screwed Up and 1,001 More facts Somebody Screwed Up, Longstreet Press)

By Deane Jordan

Parents sometimes do to children things which if they did to adults would be crimes.

If one strapped down an adult, and then without anesthesia or his permission, cut off his foreskin, one would have committed several crimes: False imprisonment, sexual assault, and sexual battery are at least three. You also would have diminished his sexual pleasure for life, a damage he and his mate could sue over in civil court.

Yet when this same injury is done to an infant we not only ignore the violation of his rights and the permanent loss, we also make the false claim that it is good for him. It is as good as cutting off an eyelid, and as painful as skinning his finger alive and cutting off the fingernail. It is as rational and justified as cutting off a baby girl's nipples.

If medical benefits were the reason for involuntary circumcision it would have ended decades ago because years of research have shown it provides is no significant benefit to him or his sexual partner. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Thus, the most common medical assault in the United States is also the least justified.

It is difficult to find an argument for involuntary circumcision other than the only way to perpetuate the mutilation is to force it upon those who cannot say no. Indeed, given circumcision's persistence through history, it is rather clear that urge to mutilate is the one constant element whereas the unfounded justifications change with time.

Doctors used to claim it cured epilepsy. Now they say it is hygienic. Both claims are false. There is also the issue of denial.

Circumcising others is a way to deny ones own injury or the injury one has allowed to be done to infants. It is passing on the pain.

Of course, in the modern era, many parents allowed this amputation based upon the poor advice of their doctor. It is difficult to accuse parents with good intentions with this child abuse thus the real problem lies with the medical profession, which literally makes billions off this injury not only in the cutting but the selling the ill-gotten flesh for commercial research.

Financially, infant circumcision is a lose-lose situation. Very few actual complications arise from foreskins compared to the number of circumcisions done. Treating those few instances over a lifetime costs society far less than the millions spent on involuntary circumcisions year after year.

Morally, involuntary circumcision is reprehensible.

It is forcing onto someone something quite unnecessary and what he would most likely not choose for himself if he had any say.

Adult males rarely want to be circumcised, and most men on earth are happily intact. Ethically, circumcision is a violation of the doctor's oath to do no harm. The foreskin of an infant is not damaged, diseased nor life-threatening. Indeed, foreskins do not kill infants - millions healthily keep them ever year—but many infants die from circumcision every year.

Others have the ends of their penis damaged more than usual or have it completely cut off. This sometimes leads to total genital amputation and raising the child as a girl, but this has proven to be rather unsuccessful. These "girls" act like boys only without penises, such as urinating standing up and a strong dislike of things feminine.

Medically, little benefit is to be gained by involuntary circumcision.

The Victorian notion that the penis is dirty is the most often given reason for involuntary circumcision. Yet the fact of the matter is it is the circumcised penis that is more dirty. The foreskin-protected glans is soft and supple, kept that way by emollients secreted by the foreskin, emollients that also have anti-bacterial and viral components.

The soft protected glans forms a resilient barrier to invading germs. The circumcised penis however is not only unprotected but keratinized, giving it a gray, wrinkled look not found in the natural penis. Keratinzation leads to drying and cracking, creating places to harbor sexually transmitted diseases, and in fact circumcised men have higher STD rates.

There also may be a correlation between circumcision and cancer of the penis, but the opposite from what is often touted. The penile cancer is high in Israel where circumcision is almost universal because of the religion. It is low in Scandinavia where circumcision is extremely rare.

Further, foreskins have estrogen receptors and one cannot help but wonder if research will show if foreskins pick up estrogen from intercourse and if that benefits intact men.

Sexually, circumcision is the unkindest cut of all. It not only permanently removes some 20,000 nerve endings but also a ring of specialized pleasure cells where the inner and out fold of the foreskin meet. It also reduces blood flow through the penis often requiring corrective surgery.

The trauma of denuding -- removing a third or more of the penile skin—and the resulting keratinization-- forces more layers of dead skin on the circumcised glans, burying what nerve receptors that are left under more layers of skin. That lessens or deadens tactile sensations.

Day-to-day friction on the circumcised penis further reduces its sensitivity. The circumcised penis is numb compared to the natural one. And it may be this fact which accounts for the overwhelming dislike among circumcised men to use condoms. A desensitized penis wrapped in latex feels little, like kissing through a screen. It is more than ironic that an injury perpetuated by doctors under the guise of prevention is actually causing more disease. Rarely discussed but also important is how circumcision affects a man's sexual partner. The most comprehensive study to date shows circumcised men engage in more non-mainstream sexual activity than do their uncut brethren. They engage in more homosexual and heterosexual anal sex and in more homosexual oral sex. The theory given is that the desensitized penis leads them to engage in rougher sex to achieve physical stimulation, or said another way, so they can actually feel something.

During heterosexual sex the lack of a foreskin also changes how the penis pleasures her. Without the foreskin it is but direction friction in the vagina whereas the natural penis provides friction and moving pressure. The desensitized penis also reduces her ability to please him during fellatio.

Fortunately, the circumcision rate is dropping in the United States, mainly because of reports in the popular press rather than medical publications. It has gone from a high of some 90 percent in 1990 to under 60 percent today, one third on the West Coast. The tide has turned and in a generation or two the rates could be fairly low and confined to religious marking.

Interestingly, most women inherently know that infant circumcision is wrong, but it is often the misinformed circumcised father who demands the amputation. Fully informed parents rarely circumcise.

In fact, one group of nurses who began to inform parents of the detrimental aspects of circumcision -- including pictures of the procedure and wound—were forced to stop by doctors who complained they were frightening parents-to-be. They preferred parents be fed circumcision fiction.

Research also shows infant circumcision not only affects the mother child bonding but nursing habits as well. It also makes the infant more sensitive to pain. Circumcised boys have a lower threshold of pain than girls or intact boys.

Research shows the brain does not forget the intense pain of circumcision - many children lapse into shock while being skinned— so there may be long term neural behavioral implications among the circumcised.

While there has always been rape, research might show the circumcised rape more than the unmutilated.

There is little to be said for involuntary circumcision other than it is common. And no doubt those who are psychologically motivated to mutilate - not misinformed parents but advocates—will continue to invent spurious reasons to pass on the pain. And therein lies the truth.

Circumcision really has nothing to do with sex or hygiene. It is a willingness to injure a hapless infant, a willingness to force upon him what he most certainly would not choose himself, a willingness abrogate his rights and rob him of a say and choice over his own body.

Infant circumcision is primitive aggression perpetuating itself on the most defenseless among us.

Doctors have a duty, an obligation to protect their youngest patients from this injury. Unfortunately, many a doctor sill cuts for a buck then sells the flesh. That is fundamentally wrong. It is immoral. Circumcision is a mistake that lasts a lifetime.

(Deane Jordan is the author of 1,001 Facts Somebody Screwed Up and 1,001 More facts Somebody Screwed Up, Longstreet Press) ###

Goodness Not From God

“The greatest tragedy
in mankind’s entire history
may be the hijacking
of morality by religion.”

--Arthur C. Clarke


By Diane Petryk-Bloom

Religion makes us good, kind, and morally pure.
Without religion, society would become chaotic and depraved.

Children being properly raised go to church.

This is what you “know” about God that is wrong.

Hard evidence shows that the more godless a society, the more healthy it is by all sociological measures. (We’ll get to the specifics.)

Yet to believe the contrary is as universal as American opinions come.

Even those who doubt the existence of a supernatural being, think we ought to hang on to the idea of a potentially punishing god -- just to keep us all in line.

To be openly atheist is socially – sometimes even physically -- risky. Your neighbors might prefer to live next to a born-again sex-offender. (cartoon) You have better chance being elected to public office openly gay than openly skeptical. You cannot be a pariah faster in this age of diversity, than to blurt out, “I’m an atheist.”

“But you look so nice,” they tell Florida humanist Jennifer Hancock when she reveals her godless state.

“Then you must smoke,” a teacher responds to the high school student who confides she has no religious belief.

“Ask Sally out, you’ll get lucky. She doesn’t believe in God…”
The social worker deciding on a recommendation in a child custody suit gives more points to the parent who attends church regularly.

That an atheist would automatically not be “nice” or automatically break school rules or be more likely to be promiscuous or a bad parent, is the prevailing American view.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota reported in early 2006 that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians, and other minority groups when asked to share their vision of American society.

The atheists were not selected for rejection by any small margin of the 2,000 households responding, said one of the researchers, Assistant Professor Joseph Gerteis, and when it came to the possibility of their children marrying into a minority group, respondents wanted them to steer clear of atheists above all.

The study’s lead researcher, Associate Sociology Professor Penny Edgell, said she believes a fear of moral decline and resulting social disorder is behind the findings.

Ten years earlier, in The Last Taboo, Radcliff’s Wendy Kaminer had already observed that intolerance of atheism surpassed that of homosexuality and wrote: “Atheists generate about as much sympathy as pedophiles.”

“Who in her right mind would want to be an atheist in America today?” wrote New York Times science writer Natalie Angier in 2001, “a place where presidential candidates compete for the honor of divining “what Jesus would do” and where Senator Joseph Lieberman can declare that we shouldn’t deceive ourselves into thinking that our constitutional “freedom of religion” means ‘freedom from religion,’ or ‘indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.”

We might add, where this country’s top law enforcement officer can say: “Civilized individuals,” which he limits to Christians, Jews and Muslims, “all understand the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator.” That was then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2002.

The sense that someone who does not actively believe in God is a morally unreliable or untrustworthy is pervasive in America, confirms James Turner, professor of history and the philosophy of science at Notre Dame University.

To be fair, George W. Bush did say atheists could be as patriotic as religious folks, but he might have been advised to say so against his own personal view after some objection was raised to his father’s 1987 campaign trail comment: “No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens,” George H. Bush said, “nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God.”

The Culture of Disbelief, by Yale Professor Stephen L. Carter, pointed out in 1993 that many devout parents see evil -- equally -- in “sex, drugs and secular humanism.”

That’s because, Tufts University Philosophy Professor Daniel C. Dennett said on C-Spann’s Book TV in early 2006, the idea has been “hammered” into us by defenders of the faith.

Even the unabridged Webster’s Dictionary gives, as its second definition of atheist, “… one who lives immorally as if disbelieving in God,” points out University of Pittsburgh’s Adolf Grunbaum. We can be sure “moral atheism” is heavily oxymoronic in America. Yet atheists say they know in their hearts they are just as moral as most believers and more so than many of them.

When we probe these ideas, we encounter Dostoyevsky in every book, article and Google:

“If there is no God, everything is permissible.”

The quote is usually attributed to the 19th century Russian novelist directly, but seems pieced together from the dialog of his fictional characters in Crime and Punishment and, most particularly, The Brothers Karamazov, wherein the question of the existence of God is the overriding theme. Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) seems to have gone from socialist revolutionary to religious convert, but it is unclear whether he believed religion begets morality or a deep human need for a moral system leads to the founding of religions. His character’s opinions do not answer for him, any more than one could say Sir Arthur Conan Doyle approved of crime because his Professor Moriarity did.

A lot of people like the Dostoyevsky quote, however misattributed, believing it neatly explains the necessity of religion.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger, whose radio talk show once topped national ratings and still has claims a weekly audience of 18 million, believes it takes God holding hell and damnation over our heads to make any of us eschew sin.

It’s a cheap view, according to Skeptic magazine’s founding publisher Michael Shermer, author of the The Science of Good and Evil. It says, “in effect, that people are naturally mean and nasty to each other…”

Author Mark I. Vuletic can’t picture everyone abandoning their children even if it were proved that God does not exist. “Christians seem to believe it is wrong to abandon their children only if God exists. Atheists believe it is wrong to abandon one’s children whether or not God exists, and that gives the atheist a much stronger moral foundation than the Christian.”

Schlessinger, nevertheless, sees nothing wrong in letting the Bible be her guide. She said she knows homosexuality is an abomination because it says so in Leviticus, third book of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. Her comment inspired an open letter to her, anonymous but well-reproduced on the World Wide Web, which facetiously asks, then, how much to charge for a daughter one wants to sell into slavery, who should be obligated to stone the person to death who works on the Sabbath, and how to kill friends who get their hair trimmed…. all among the stipulations in Leviticus. No answer from Schlessinger has surfaced.

C.S. Lewis, (1898-1963) best known as author of the Chronicles of Narnia fantasy novels, was similarly unequivocal: “It has always seemed ridiculous to me for people to think that you can still have ‘morality,’ particularly Christian morality, without God.”

In a 1972 speech on morality, the Rev. Billy Graham, who has preached to more people than anyone in the history of religion, stopped short of saying atheists are immoral. But he did say: “Our freedom is based on law and this law has been rooted in a faith and universal moral law given by almighty God.”

“Morality begins with the character of God. There is no other foundation for it,” says Anglican clergyman and Cambridge theology graduate Dick Tripp of New Zealand. “He is holy, perfect in his love, in his justice, in his faithfulness, and any other ‘good’ quality you can think of.”

Some would disagree. Eminent English philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806 -1873) revealed in his autobiography in the mid 19th century, that his father thought religion was the greatest enemy of morality for the explicit reason that the character of God was not good or just.

Mill said his father thought religion vitiated the standard of morals by making them consist of doing the will of a being, “on whom it lavishes all the phrases of adulation, but whom, in sober truth, it depicts an eminently hateful.”

Eminent philosophers John Locke (1632-1704) and David Hume (1711-1776) came even earlier to the conclusion that morality derives from human experience and God does not implant morality. The pious man, Hume came to believe, would invariably turn out to be “a rascal.”

In The Impossibility of God, Michael Martin explains that God is called good while his behavior is undeniably bad. “That is, having purposes and acting on motives which in all ordinary circumstances we would recognize as bad. He is depicted as behaving in some respects as a malevolent demon, in others like a petulant tyrant, and in others like a mischievous and thoughtless child.”

Likewise, Steven Pinker, cognitive scientist at Harvard and author of The Blank Slate, says he’s still surprised at the morality/religion link because history suggests otherwise.

“The Bible contains several injunctions from God to the Israelites to slay the occupants of the towns they covet,” Pinker writes in his essay “Evolution and Ethics” in the anthology Intelligent Thought. “…except for the young women, who they are to take as unwilling wives. Since then religions have given the world stonings, witch burnings, crusades, inquisitions, holy wars, jihads, fatwahs, suicide bombers, gay bashers, abortion-clinic gunmen, child molesters, and mothers who drown their children so they can happily be reunited in Heaven.”

C.S. Lewis once wrote that witch burnings were not inconsistent with morality because, at the time, the witch hunters really believed in witchcraft and believed they were doing the right thing.

This would indicate that reasoning is okay, when it comes to figuring out what’s moral and what isn’t. But much of what we read about why religion is essential to morality is that its morality is absolute and handed down from above. No reasoning required.

That’s just the problem, Dennett wrote in his 2006 book, Breaking the Spell “Those who have unquestioning faith …if they themselves haven’t conscientiously considered, on their own, whether their pastors or priests of rabbis or imams are worthy of this delegated authority over their own lives, then they are in fact taking a personally immoral stand.”

Any “Good Book” followers who think, maybe, Mill, Martin, Pinker, and Dennett are full of it, can easily check out Bible tales, moral models and contradictions within at “Notes on Bible Problems” by Richard Packham at http://home.teleport.com/packham/bible.htm Take Moses for one example. Everyone knows and many honor Moses for handing down God’s Ten Commandments.

“The character of Moses is the most horrid….” writes religion scholar William Edelman. “Moses said (according to the Bible) ‘Kill every male among the little ones…and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him…but of all the women who have not known a man…keep alive for yourselves.” Were the women expected to have any right to object to being kidnapped and raped? The Bible doesn’t consider that a moral problem. Today, most of us would. Our laws so indicate.

Was the wretchedness of Moses an isolated case? Consider Abraham, whose marrying his sister and seducing her handmaid were his lesser crimes. Abraham drove one child and its mother into the desert to starve, drove out his other children and their mothers, and was willing to butcher his other child to please God.

Packham breaks it down for you by Bible characters or subjects, such as human sacrifice; animal sacrifice; war; genocide and slaughter; cruelty, barbarity and violence; deceit and treachery; lying; incest; extortion; cannibalism; slavery; drunkenness; religious intolerance and closed minds; polygamy and concubinage; prostitution; abuse of women and women’s inferiority; abandonment of wife, children and family; hypocrisy; homosexuality; and obscene, offensive and erotic passages.

It’s all in there.

God will punish David (II Sam 12:11-12) by giving his wives to another to enjoy in public view. What would Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority think of that spectacle? (Not to mention the morality of punishing the wife who hadn’t irked God in her own right.)

But, throughout the Bible God likes to punish people for the sins of others.

He likes to kill children.

In Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion and Morality, Allen points out that God says, while making his commandments, “in what is supposed to be the moment of his most supremely important communication with the children of earth…that if a man does not happen to bow down before a religious picture he will not only punish that man, but also his children, his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren!”

“It is nonsense for the Deity to describe that man or woman and perhaps hundreds of innocent offspring as “those who hate me.” Humans who make such statements are usually identified as suffering from severe paranoia. Why a god is supposed to be admired for so speaking is unclear.”

Atheists are atheists because they see no evidence for God. But they are buttressed in their views by the inconsistency, irrationality, and brutality of the Bible.

Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, who thinks teaching children that there is a hell in which they might suffer eternal punishment is worse child abuse than a bit of fondling by a priest, despises the Catholic church’s “extraordinarily retrogressive stand on everything to do with reproduction. Any sort of new technology which makes life easier for women without causing any suffering is likely to be opposed by the Catholic Church.”

Philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), in Why I Am Not A Christian, complained about the immorality of forcing women to bear child after child until they die worn out rather than approve contraceptives and birth control information. He saw the churches as retarding progress, mitigation of racial discrimination and slavery and “every moral progress there has been in the world.”

Allen wondered why the Catholic church never censured the Mafia or denied its members a Christian burial.

“I’ve known very few atheists,” Allen wrote, but, without exception they have been men and women or principle and admirable as citizens. Of the few truly despicable human beings I have encountered, I regret to report that almost every one of them was at least a nominal believer in one religion or another.

Oft-quoted early 20th century columnist H.L. Meneken (1880-1956) said religion is “so absurd that it comes close to imbecility.”

Harris is impatient for the view to spread: “Surely there must come a time when we will acknowledge the obvious: theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance.”

Science/science fiction writer Isaac Asimov (1920-1992), author of more than 500 books, said Bible believers ignore all the patient findings of thinking minds throughout the centuries since the Bible was written. “And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all…”

On the flip side, claiming super intelligence for atheists may be a stretch – for all except Dennett. Dennett has started a movement aimed at a new moniker for atheists – brights. Because they are ‘bright,” he thinks, atheists are living better lives.

“About the best that can be said for religion is that it helps some people achieve the level of citizenship and morality typically found in brights,” Dennett writes.

Of course, Dennett considers himself a bright and tells those offended by his elitism that they need to adjust their perspective.

What do the facts show?

There are many, examples of atheists living moral lives – honest, generous, law-abiding, compassionate -- but individual examples don’t prove anything –except that perhaps religious zealots should give a non-believer the benefit of the doubt. Rather, those who think Christianity or other religions, exclusively, deliver our morals, dismiss the good citizen atheists and moral humanists as isolated cases of people who will behave well for a short time, but only because they have absorbed the attitudes of a religion-saturated society.

They are wrong.

Not only are some good, moral atheists not rendered good and moral from living among believers, they are better.

And societies are better the more atheists they have!

What?

Social scientists using data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup, and other research bodies concluded, in general, “higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, sexually transmitted disease infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.”

Also:

“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”

It is the world’s only prosperous democracy where murder rates are still high; with “uniquely high” teen abortion and syphilis, and adolescent gonorrhea 300 times higher than in less devout countries.

The report was authored by Gregory Paul and reported in the Journal of Religion and Society, an American academic journal.

Paul said evidence accumulated by a number of different studies suggests that religion might actually contribute to social ills.

Falwell can say, “If you’re not a born-again Christian you’re a failure as a human being,” but born again Christians have a slightly higher divorce rates than non-Christians and find few atheists to room with in prisons.

Researcher George Bara, himself a born-again Christian, said Bible Belt Americans have the highest divorce rate and atheists and agnostics the lowest of all – although that may be due to other factors than religion, such as economic status. And don’t think those divorces happened then the couples sought religion. Bara said 90 percent of the divorces among born again come after the individuals in the marriages had their spiritual rebirths, not before. (religioustolerance.org)

Of course, marriage in the Bible does not impede a man’s right to take concubines. It is valid only if the wife is a virgin (and if not she must be killed). And a man must marry his brother’s widow. Stipulations that we don’t think the Moral Majority has in mind when it considers the sanctity of marriage.

Meanwhile, statistics show more atheists than God-fearers obey the Ten Commandments –at least the sensible ones – and the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

At a time when slave holders were pointing out that slavery was sanctioned by the Bible, Abraham Lincoln said, “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.” This is reasoning along the lines of the Golden Rule, which appears many millennia before Christianity. Most religions encorporate an ethic of reciprocity, but monotheistic ones, like Christianity and Judaism, teach that God’s whim trumps the Golden Rule.

Angier: “In one classic study, sociologists at the University of Washington compared students who were part of the “Jesus people” movement with a comparable group of professed atheists and found atheists were no more likely to cheat on tests that were Christians and no less likely to volunteer at a hospital for the mentally disabled.”

As this was being written, sociologist Phil Zuckerman was in Demark finishing up research for his upcoming book, Society Without Religion. As the title suggests, Zuckerman has looked at countries where atheism dominates.

His findings support Gregory Paul’s report.

“High degrees of non-belief clearly do not result in societal ruin, and vice versa,” Zuckerman said in a telephone interview.

Demark and Sweden in Europe and Vietnam and Japan in the Far East, have the lowest levels of religious belief in the world, Zuckerman said. They also have the lowest homicide, infant mortality, poverty, illiteracy, and the highest wealth, life expectancy, educational attainment, and gender equality.

“I’m not saying atheism brings on societal health,’ Zuckerman said. “Societal health causes widespread atheism. Social insecurity equates with a widespread belief in God.

“From Muslim fundamentalism in Iran to Christian fundamentalism in Indiana, the argument is loudly trumpeted that belief in God is good for society and rejection of God is bad. That thesis is badly incorrect.”

Zuckerman is the author of An Invitation to the Sociology of Religion (2003) and teaches at Pitzer College in California

Organic atheism, that is, atheism not state-imposed and enforced, is highest, he said, in Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Japan, Vietnam and Taiwan. Atheism is virtually non-existent in Africa, South America, the Middle East and much of Asia.

Scandinavia doesn’t have high suicide or alcoholism, is lower on all the other indicators of societal pathology. Religion proponents will point to problems in atheist Russia, Zuckerman said, but there non-belief was imposed. “Totalitarian nations are always a nightmare,” he said, “regardless of religious faith or non-faith.”

If you ask someone in Denmark where the got their moral values, they will point to ancestral Christianity, Zuckerman said. But even at that, he said, they were pagan longer than they were Christian. Christianity came very late.

Zuckerman said he was surprised at the citizens’ “absolute indifference” to religion, even the possibility of a human soul. He asked doctors operating on a cadaver if they thought the deceased had a soul and they simply said they never thought about it.

His over-all finding: “In Scandinavia, people were committed to helping others, there was a general belief in being a good person. Society without strong religion is not only possible, but quite pleasant.”

If atheists have morals but they aren’t derived from Christian, Jewish or Muslim teachings, from who or what do they derive?

The answer will not please fundamentalist believers: Evolution.

The relatively new science of evolutionary psychology says we get our morals from our animal ancestors.

“Profoundly, neurology tells us that we are born with an ability to be moral thanks to evolution,” wrote Dorion Sagan and John Skoyles in Up From Dragons. “We have not just a sense or right and wrong but, as important, a concern with ethics….We did not evolve from animals that were solitary and met only for mating, disappearing for the rest of the year from each other’s sight. We evolved from apes that had to find a way to live together. We thus need to share socially predictable ways of doing things. This, of course does not mean we cannot be self-oriented in our actions. We are out to get the best for ourselves; behind social cooperation is social competition. But we do this like other apes, against a background of finding ways to live and work together in our social group….a world governed by ‘oughts.’”

In The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are, Richard Wright says the evolutionary mandate that created morality was the need to get our genes into the next generation.p 325 A mother who takes good care of her children is more likely to have them survive. Thus, good mothers get their genes passed on.

“What is in our genes’ interests is what seems “right” – morally right, objectively right, whatever sort of rightness is in order. Sympathy, empathy, compassion, conscience, guilt, remorse, even the very sense of justice, the sense that doers of good serve reward and doers of evil deserve punishment – all these can now be viewed as vestiges of organic history on a particular planet.”

Emperor Penguins, for instance, huddle together during the worst weather. Those on the outer edge of the huddle, exposed to the worst blasts of icy artic air, are rotated into the middle of the group periodically, so the burden of the outer edge is shared. All in the group survive, and that is better for all.

Empathy seems to increase as organisms become more intelligent, as one can see in the behavior of higher mammals, says New Age writer Barbara Marx Hubbard, who many regard as heir to visionary Buckminster Fuller. The process of evolution began and proceeded for million of years without organized religion, she said, and will continue beyond any organized religion into the ever-evolving future. Only now, man has progressed to the point where he can effect the direction of his change, she writes in her book, Conscious Evolution. “Humans are bringing more humaneness into the process.”

But that, too, may be just evolution at work. The more we learn about what causes human behavior, says psychiatrist Armando Favazza, the more we diminish the concept of free will and the concept of sin depends on free will. Favazza is the author of PsychoBible: Behavior, Religion and the Holy Book.

Once humans began to write, they wrote about morality. Plato and Socrates, certainly, discussed morality.

Religion, says author Salman Rushdie, was a way of codifying morality already established before humans gave up multiple gods and myths.

Rushdie, who knows how dangerous religious “morals” can be, having had to live about 10 years of his life in hiding due to an Islamic fatwah issued against him for ostensibly insulting the faith in his book The Satanic Verses, said morality is independent of religion.

But what is it, really?

If morality isn’t “what God wants,” how do we define morality?

Humanist Jennifer Hancock says secular humanist define it as acting with compassion toward others. Oh, sure, honesty and responsibility are often mentioned as elements of morality, she says. “But if you say honest and responsible, you’ve described Hitler,” Hancock says. “Compassion is the essential element.”

Moslems complain that the Scandinavians are promiscuous, but by the standard of compassion, sex between the consenting doesn’t rank as immoral. Beheading foreigners does.

Humanistic ethics considers choices regarding shared human interests, wants, needs and values, writes American Humanist Association founder Paul Kurtz. “We judge them by their consequences for human happiness and social justice.” Humanists agree to support: the dignity and autonomy of individuals; self-determination and freedom exercised responsibly; pursuit of excellence; carrying out responsibilities and duties to others; exercising empathy and caring; providing moral education for the young; use of reasoning in framing ethical judgments; willingness to modify ethical principles in the light of reality and new discovery; and respect for principles – the end does not justify the means. (see The Humanist Manifesto 2000)

It might surprise many to find out that Mother Teresa, who was made a Saint for her supposed selfless care of others, believed that suffering was a good thing and did not go out of her way to alleviate pain. She collected vast sums in donations, according to journalist Christopher Hitchens, and did not spend it on the poor and medically needy. Her care facilities were grotesquely primitive, platforms for proselytizing not healing, Hitchens wrote in his 1995 book, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. Hitchens also criticized Mother Teresa for helping tyrannical dictatorships like that of the Duvaliers in Haiti, taking money from swindler Charles Keating, and maintaining a double standard on divorce – no good for the Irish, but okay for her friend Princess Diana. And when she needed medical care she took herself to fancy clinics in California.

Matt Cherry of the Council for Secular Humanism, said Mother Teresa compares unfavorably with an atheist doctor Indumati Parikh, who sold her home in a middle class are of Bombay to open a clinic in a slum area and lived and worked among the poor for the next forty years. She brought not only medical care but education to the poor, and brought down the birth rate by improving the infant mortality. Mother Teresa took care of her image, Cherry said, Dr. Parikh took care of people. In convincing us that religious people own morality, religion has performed an amazing sleight of hand, Cherry said.

Schermer defines morality as “right and wrong thoughts and behaviors in the context of the rules of the social group.”

But what happens when divergent social groups cross paths? In Mogadishu, Somalia, today a judge will impose a death sentence on anyone who doesn’t pray daily. Moral for them; immoral to us.

“Morality is simply the avoidance of unnecessary harm,’ says ex-preacher Dan Barker, now a staff member of the Freedom From Relgion Foundation. “If we minimize pain and enhance the quality of life, we are moral,” Barker said. To be moral, atheists have access to the simple tools of reason and kindness. There is no cosmic code book directing our actions,”

Rushdie said morality is that which is intrinsic within us which wishes to distinguish right from wrong. It’s hardwired in us. “Religion is one of the answers,” he said, “but it’s perfectly possible for me to say we can create codes to live by. One is democracy. We continue to argue what’s okay and what’s not. Slavery at one point was okay. It’s not anymore. Women were not allowed to own property, now they are.”

Times change, technology develops and so we evolve. And so does morality. This is one of the big problems with trying to impose a morality with codes written thousands of years ago, even if they were not internally contradictory. Could the Bible address the problem of how to decide the fate of frozen embryos whose parents have died? Does the Koran say women shouldn’t drive, or, more importantly, should be denied modern medical care because the doctor is a male? Could any ancient religious text say if separating Siamese twins who share a heart is taking a life or allowing one? If we should colonize Mars?

The only way to look at these issues is from the standpoint of the greatest good for the greatest number.

Sometimes it isn’t easy. Moral dilemmas abound. It was easier when we lived in more homogenous, socially isolated groups. But we are a global society now. If we look to religion for our morals, we will have only conflict, because religions don’t agree.
If one religion says it is necessary to stone someone to death for kissing on a beach, and we take the position of honoring all religions, then we must allow that. But reasoning individuals will see that normal human activity is not criminal, and even criminality may not deserve the death penalty.

No one wants “everything” to be permissible. We want to be secure in our homes, free from fear of violence. We do not want to be enslaved, we want to be able to accumulate possessions without concern they will be stolen. We recognize the need for laws and a justice system.

But, as Pinker says, neither scientists nor defender of religion should accept the premise that morality belongs in the province of religion. In practice, religions have sanctioned vile acts throughout human history. In principle, there is no reason to believe religious edicts are inherently moral or that they foster morality, and some reason to believe they have the opposite effect…the recurrence of atrocities committed in the name of God shows that they are not random perversions.”
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“Moral progress over the millennia,” Pinker adds, is explainable in terms of circumstances that encourage people to project themselves into the lives of others and hence expand the circle of empathy.”

We will see this circle grow beyond other cultures. We already have expanded it to the animal kingdom to the credit of the animal rights movement. A hundred or two years hence we may find we are more akin to the Star Trek universe envisioned by Gene Roddenberry, with empathy for alien life forms, androids, humanistic holograms, and a even a ship showing budding sentience. And as Arthur C. Clarke was fond of reminding us, what we can imagine is probably already on the way. There will be things we haven’t imagined that will strike from out of the blue.

Only knowledge can prepare us.

“The way to be moral is to learn what causes harm and how to avoid it,” Barker says. This means investigating nature: who we are and what we need, where we live, how we function, and why we behave the way we do. This gives an objective basis to morality, even though the values themselves are not objective things.

As we know, one of religions’ claims is to have “objective” morality. This claim is nonsense. Even “thou shalt not kill” has its myriad of exceptions, under religion, not the least of them the edict to kill non-believers, former believers, and those who believe in other religions or even sects of the same religion.

There is no objective morality, Dr. Laura. There never has been and never can be standards that remain true no matter what the circumstances. The criticism of “relativism” or “situational ethics,” therefore, is not legitimate. You would tell a lie not to hurt someone’s feelings, steal food to save a starving child, shoot down a killer before he kills more, etc. Those are the easy ones. Think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Did the atomic bomb drops on Japan at ending the World War II in the Pacific save more or kill more? Would you be here today if your father or grandfather had been needed for a foot-soldier invasion of Japan? Would your Japanese daughter-in-law? Are all lives equal? Should we consider a brain surgeon worth more than a rock musician? An athlete more valuable than a stay-at-home mom? How about a seeing-eye dog compared to an unemployed drifter? Irradicating a pest that destroys food crops against causing an environmental imbalance?

Some times, discerning the compassionate act, or the right action, is terribly, terribly difficult.

Howard Bloom, author of The Lucifer Principle, says no one should be killed –ever. But we live in a world of dangerous forces. “I hate to think of the idea of preemptive war,” Bloom says, “but we are forced to think of it.”

The best hope for answering the moral questions we face now and in the future comes from science, That’s why the current trend of disdaining science in America is disturbing.

Eminent sociobiologist E. O. Wilson, who was raised a creationist, writes that there is “something deep in religious belief that divides people and amplifies societal conflict. The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternate view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us.”

###

Music Heals

By Diane Petryk

Hospital green. Children's ward. The 6-year-old boy with a tracheotomy tube lay motionless. Medical staff couldn't lift his despondency. Kathy Lord and Susan Weber tip-toe in.
A parent nods. Softly, they begin to sing. It was the holiday season, so they chose “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

At first, said Laurel Whitaker of the Brooklyn Children’s Medical Center, the boy watched listlessly.

“But before long one hand came up and he began to snap it to the music, then his other hand came up and he began to clap," she said. "By the time they finished he had both hands over his head and was mouthing words to the song." When the musicians were about to leave, he clasped his hands together and reverently bowed his head and mouthed ‘thank-you.’”

The boy’s reaction wasn’t unusual. Hospitals across the city have seen music’s almost magical power for triggering metamorphosis. Moods lift. Blood pressure falls. Will to live can be brought back. Music -- especially the gentle and loving Lord and Weber style -- can often trump medicine.

Musicians Kathy Lord and Susan Weber, who play guitar and electric bass respectively, had been performing together for more than a dozen years when, one day in 1997, Weber experienced a numbness in her left hand. Her doctor referred her to “the best,” Beth Israel Medical Center’s chief neurosurgeon, Dr. Fred J. Epstein. It turned out that Weber’s problem was transitory, but she sought some way to repay Epstein for his kindness and expertise.

Epstein was also head of the Pediatrics Department at the Institute for Neurology and Neurosurgery at Beth Israel and therein lay the answer. Lord and Weber would donate a performance for the hospitalized children. That day, as they sang and strummed for children gathered in the ward’s playroom, miracles began to happen. Depressed kids brightened. Unresponsive faces soon beamed. Some children forgot their pain and picked up tambourines. They sang, they laughed; they were swept from their cares by melodies and harmonies. And the effect lasted long after the duo had gone. Epstein was thrilled with the residual positive effects of the performance. It had actually helped the children heal! He insisted Kathy and Susan return, and soon. The rest is history.

“A fire got lit under us,” said Lord. Before long, they had formed Music That Heals, a non-profit organization to raise money and provide performances for hospitals, nursing homes, homeless shelters, hospices and other groups of people needing their spirits lifted. Lord and Weber, with and without their band of 4 to 6 others, already had a full bookings schedule. They were in demand at colleges, for weddings and church groups, and on cruises. They soon found, however, their Music That Heals gigs were the most satisfying.

Kathy, who grew up in Gravesend, said, when she was young, she couldn’t go near a hospital because seeing sick and suffering people upset her. Now, a rare week will go by when she doesn’t make the rounds in one hospital or another.

“It’s not like I don’t see the tragedy,” she said. “I just don’t take it in. I focus on the gift we have to give.” Sometimes it’s more than music. At the Brooklyn Hospital Center recently, Susan had to catch up with Kathy after being delayed with a 3-year-boy. He had a big IV needle in his arm. “He said it felt better if I held his hand,” she said. At the hospital, Weber, a Bronx native, now of Valley Stream, and Lord, now of Bensonhurst, are familiar faces. They stroll the hall in pediatrics and peek into each room.

“Would you like a song?” Kathy asks. Sometimes the child is alone and the music also alleviates loneliness. When parents are present, they are often surprised at the request and shrug an indifferent “okay.” Then they see how their child perks up and hope the women will sing another.

"How about that Lion King song, or a little Bob Marley?" Kathy strums her guitar and sings. Susan sings and shakes a small egg with little pellets inside that make a soft maracas-like sound. She keeps a supply of the eggs in her bag and gives one to each child so he or she can shake it in time to the music, too, and they get to keep it. In the intensive care unit, a nurse is washing her hands with a weary look on her face. She turns and sees Kathy and Susan and her lips curl upward.

“Listen,” she says to a young boy as the women begin with some Kenny Loggins lyrics: “Christopher Robin and I walked along Under branches lit up by the moon Posing our questions to Owl and Eyeore . . .” The atmosphere in the ICU changes for doctors, parents and patients. A young boy talks about his school and learning to play the guitar himself. In another room, Kathy finds out the young girl would like a sad song. They play Sarah McLachlan’s “I Will Remember You.”

“You have to respect what the child wants,” Susan explains. “But nobody is too sick,” she adds. “Some will decline. Often it’s because they’re unfamiliar -- culturally they’ve never seen someone playing in a hospital. We make sure they realize it’s free.” She’s quick to point out she and Kathy are artists and not clinical musical therapists. Where a clinical therapist is limited to certain textbook methodologies, they are free to adapt to the dynamics of each situation.

“Kathy and Susan are so soft in terms of their playfulness that kids let them in even when they won’t let others in,” says Honey Shields, Beth Israel’s director of Child Life Therapy. “Sometimes they’ll follow them down the hall. It’s a form of empowerment for them.” “We use our intuition and our sensitivities,” Kathy says. “We express feeling in song.” That’s important, even in situations where it’s clear that neither medicine nor music will cure.

At Beth Israel once, they encountered a child with a brain tumor, near death. Many of her family members were gathered in her room. None of them spoke English, but Susan, with her perfect Spanish, was able to learn that the family did want them to play. Softly, they launched into Guantanamera, LaBamba, Cielito Lindo and more. Susan learned that the dying girl loved music. As they played, her family began to sing to her.

“Suddenly there were about 20 people singing and crying and it was beautiful,” Kathy said. “It was a bonding experience for the family and a poignant send off. And I think the girl heard it. I think she got it on some level, the love they had for her they were able to transmit in vibrations of sound. I think she got it.”

Another time they were in a neo-natal unit where a physician was working on a baby the size of one’s palm,” Kathy recalled. The baby was just a few days old. The doctor nodded for them to sing and they did, with several family members around the tiny bed. After awhile, the baby stopped breathing. “The doctor said to us, ‘At least she got to hear a song before she died.’”

In another type of venue, Lord and Weber can reveal more of their rock ’n roll roots. Recently they played for a group of about 30 autistic and developmentally challenged youngsters and young adults at Holy Name Church’s basement rectory in Prospect Park. Able to forget their handicaps for a while, the youths danced exuberantly for more than hour to tunes like “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Hot, Hot, Hot,” and “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” They had a great time, but it was Susan and Kathy who were grateful.

“We were born to do this. We are grateful to be able to give them our gifts,” Weber said. “That’s the satisfaction. If I died today I would feel my life had been worthwhile.” Now in its 10th year, Music That Heals has grown to include about 15 additional musicians who tour the same types of venues. But the organization is still small.

“I’m a musician, not a fundraiser,” Kathy says. Still, she’s also a runner and that led her to arrange an annual 5K Run to help raise funds. The event is held in Prospect Park each Fall. It has grown from about 80 participants the first year to about 200 in 2004. Last year it raised $8,000. Matty Heavey, owner of Circles Restaurant, always donates his restaurant space for a party after race day.

Some of the children who heard Lord and Weber when they were ill, inevitably turn up for the race, giving testimonials to the power of music in general and Lord and Weber in particular. ”Chase all the clouds from the sky Back to the days of Christopher Robin Back to the ways of Christopher Robin and Pooh.”

"Come By the Fire"

by Diane Petryk-Bloom

Winter comes early to Michigan’s upper peninsula, especially the windy Straits of Mackinac linking Lake Huron and Lake Michigan above the mitten part of the state.

It was only early November, but we had our first serious snow storm already.

They say it’s a sign of good insulation if snow doesn’t quickly melt off your roof, but I had no cause to be pleased with my new 2-bedroom A-Frame on that account .

I was about to have a hole cut in the roof and for some reason the man set to come up from Cheboygan to do the job on my St. Ignace dwelling was on the phone asking me if there was ice up there.

On examination, one side of the steeply pitched roof was fairly dry. The other side looked like a giant splattered snow cone.

“Not much,” I said. The sun will probably burn it all off by the time you get here. Was there ever sunshine in northern Michigan in November? Why was I willing to risk this man slipping into oblivion?

In a word: Imprinting

We are all indelibly imprinted with certain image and experiences from our childhood -- those that stick and dictate our lifelong preferences.

Back in 1950-something, I’m in second grade at Jefferson Elementary School in Livonia, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The school was six or seven blocks from my home – too close for school bus service.

On a morning that didn’t even hint at a need for leggings, I set off for school. But by 3:15 it had started to snow and turned much colder.

Two things about this era: Many moms didn’t drive, mine among them, and girls weren’t allowed to wear slacks or jeans to school—even little ones. That wouldn’t change in my district until 1968.

So on that afternoon – no bus, no car, no long pants, I turned my newly 7-year-old self into the wind and pushed for home. The sharp, icy gusts bit into my bare legs. I was only halfway home when they started to numb.

My mom had no means to rescue me. She did the next best thing. She started a fire in the fireplace.

When she saw me tumble in red-cheeked and red-kneed, she looked relieved and said, “Hurry, come by the fire.”

I still see her kneeling there before the fireplace rolling newspapers into paper logs to put under the grate to help ignite the wood above.

In choosing a floor plan in this post World War II suburb, I knew my parents had sacrificed the third bedroom for the larger living room with fireplace. Considering they had a boy and a girl who would soon outgrow sharing the same bedroom, you can see the importance they placed on that.

It might have been the wisest choice. Through the fifties and sixties and into the seventies that fireplace warmed us while we read or watched TV, its amber aliveness welcomed relatives and guests and it pitched in for the furnace in a crunch.

I learned the importance of opening the flue before building a fire by smoking up the entire house a few times.

Every Christmas my mom would tuck the red ribbon bow of her pine cone cluster in the same gap in the fireplace fieldstone. I knew the fold-out Hallmark Christmas card train would be on the long mantle to display the greetings that would come in the mail. And the little candle carolers and a gum-drop tree from the dime store would be up there as well.

At college in East Lansing I had a house with a fireplace which became a social gathering spot for students in the neighborhood.

When I got my first job, I rented for awhile and always missed the hearth part of making a home. So when I was offered a deal on my first house my first question was “Does it have a fireplace?”

Nevermind that it was Florida. (The air conditioning system could be added later) Yes! It had a fireplace. Sold. The only thing to do before moving in was have the white paint sandblasted off the fireplace bricks.

My memories of that fireplace include two glasses of wine and conversation that lasted well into the morning.

Apartment hunting in Savannah, Georgia, was a dreary until I was shown the garden-level two-bedroom on Monterrey Square. The landlady talked up the picturesque view and the history of the square, which included the mansion you could see to the left, already scene of the murder that would be depicted in the bestseller “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” But all I needed to see was the fireplace. It was small with no mantle, just a curved black marble framed opening.

Does it work?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. “But you have to sweep the ashes out – there’s no chute.”

In Livonia, the ashes dropped to the incinerator in the basement, but this was a 100-year-old townhouse. I didn’t mind. Eye level out the front windows were the feet of passersby and the wheels of tour buses. I preferred to watch the logs flame-dance in purple, orange, yellow and blue. That fireplace assuaged the lonely hours between work and sleep.

A baby son and a new life took me to North Carolina and the fireplace that came with the house in the Blue Ridge foothills was necessary for Santa to make his stop. It also roasted marshmallows at Halloween parties and – history repeats – helped us survive a year of pesky furnace woes.

When we decided to return to our home state of Michigan in 1995, we first rented an old Victorian home with bay windows and – of course – a fireplace. It served us well, but when the time came to buy a home there was nothing available with a fireplace in my price range in the small town of St. Ignace.

There was a cute 2-bedroom that had everything but.

Then someone leaned into my ear, and, in the manner of the man who whispered “plastic” to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, said "Vermont Castings."

I bought the fireplaceless house with the pitched roof. From the loft bedroom you could see Lake Huron. Undulating water has somewhat the same effect – waves and fire both roar in strength and then ebb – like life.

After the closing, I headed south across the Mackinac Bridge to the fireplace shop in Cheboygan. I picked out a beige, enameled Vermont Castings wood stove with a glass door front, top lid for loading while burning, and mitten-warmer sides. I chose a gray stone base and black chimney pipe. The pipe would extend the full height of the 2-story living room, take a dramatic jog to avoid the central beam and go out above the roof. All this for $4,200. I didn’t hesitate.

Which brings us back to the man on the icy roof. He survived. We had a fireplace in time for Santa.

The night my 7 year-old and I strung some holiday lights around the porch railing we made a snowman, frolicked in the snow, and studied the brilliant constellations visible on a northern Michigan night.

Then, after midnight, we stomped off the snow, chucked the boots, and started a log. When the fire flared we settled on a sheepskin rug to real The Railway Children.

Night after night that winter we read in front of that glowing, glossy robot with the very tall, crimped stove pipe hat.

Will my son remember me chopping the icy logs free on the porch or lighting the kindling as I remember my mother rolling newspaper logs and wielding the poker under the grate? And know that “come by the fire” means “I love you.”

Pakistan's Nuke Submarine Threat Credible

By Diane Petryk-Bloom

The cold white illumination of the computer screen was the only light in the bedroom.

It overlooked our bed like a wide-mouthed monster that never slept.

It was the 3 a.m in New York. My husband clicked open his email inbox.

“Here it is,” he said.

I had long gone to sleep, but not really. I got up on my knees behind him and put my chin on his left shoulder as he clicked open the email he had been waiting for.

Former top CIA agent Robert D. Steele had responded in just four words:

“Your scenario is credible.”

I know emails don’t flash. But whenever I remember that moment I see the words flashing in my mind.

There would be no more sleep that night.

My husband, Howard Kenneth Bloom, author of The Lucifer Principle, is a mass behavior scientist, a scholar of the history of Islam, as well as a human encyclopedia of history and science. Earlier, he had been researching for his upcoming appearance on Coast to Coast AM, a radio talk show. He is often invited on the show to talk about current events. A 9-11 anniversary was at hand. The question was – what could happen next?

Pakistan was a likely place for him to start, because Pakistan, he says, has one of the most violently fundamentalist and anti-American populations among the world’s 57 Islamic states. Many of those hate us a lot, so that’s saying something, he told me.

Pakistan sucks you into a vortex of political and religious issues that branch offin endless threads: Osama Bin Laden in the hills, military dictator Pervez Musharaff holding on against great odds, fundamentalist agitation, religious vigilantes, the “Islamic” bomb…

Among these, Howard discovered Pakistan’s Agosta 90-B submarines.

You probably haven’t heard about those. For some reason, mainstream media just doesn’t want to report about them. But here’s what you should know:

These are state of the art stealth subs that pose a challenge even to our Navy’s sophisticated tracking equipment.

• Each can carry 16 Harpoon Stand-Off Land Attack cruise missiles
• Those are nuclear missiles
• Since Pakistan tested its first nuclear bomb in 1998, every nuclear device it has made has been a missile warhead.
• The Agosta 90-Bs have a range of 12,000 miles

That means they could slink into Chesapeake Bay or up the Hudson River undetected.

Pakistan has these powerful subs courtesy of our wise friends, the French. Their government-owned shipbuilder, DCN, which builds France’s naval vessels, helped the Pakistanis build not only the subs, but a shipyard that can make more.

“According to the Pakistani Navy Captain Iftikhar Riaz Qureshi, who commanded both of these subs in their test phases,” Howard wrote, “Pakistan acquired its Agosta 90Bs to provide itself with ‘second strike nuclear capability.’ Since Pakistan tested its first nuclear bomb in 1998, every nuclear device it's made has been a missile warhead. Qureshi's words imply that from day one, Pakistan's intention has been to tip these missiles with atomic warheads.

After a 12,000 mile journey, these subs, according to Defence Journal, could unleash their missiles on New York and Washington, and still be able to take refuge in mid-ocean, lay low and threaten other world capitals.

“The United States operates a network of hydrophones scattered all over the Atlantic and Pacific seabed. We are listening for subs like these,” Howard posted on his website, Howardbloom.net, “but we may not be able to hear them. The Pakistani subs use a methanol-and-liquid-oxygen engine bedded on a suspension system that quiets its purr to a whisper. We may not be able to detect their silent running beneath the sounds of zebrafish fanning their tails.”

Steele confirmed Howard’s fears that we’d need intuition like The Hunt for Red October’s fictional heroes – every time out.

Who is Robert D. Steele? After a distinguished career a a CIA operative, including three dangerous tours of duty as a clandestine officer under deep cover, Steele spent seven years training intelligence professionals from 40 nations and consulted directly with 18 nations. He served in three of the four Directorates of the Central Intelligence Agency, helped program for overhead imagery satellites and managed an offensive national-level counter intelligence program. Steele was responsible for creating the newest US national intelligence production facility, the US Marine Corps Intelligence Center. He’s also an Amazon.com top reviewer of books on national defense.

This is the scenario Howard envisioned and sent to Steele:

Pakistan’s military dictator, Pervez Musharaff, will be killed or deposed (Musharaff is either a genuine ally of United States or pretending to be, but, either way, he has been target of at least five assassination attempts.)

Osama Bin Laden or his successor or followers will take power in Pakistan.

Then, Islamic extremists will have control of the country and its military hardware – including the Agosta B’s.

They unleash them on New York and Washington.

The nuclear devastation is enough to bring other nations to their knees.

Before long, your daughter and mine wear headscarves and live under Sharia, the religious law of the Muslim faith. Equal rights for women are no more.

Western men don’t have it much better. Western freedoms are history.

What facts add crcdibilty to this scenario:

*From 1979 to 1995, Pakistan was the headquarters for a group of ‘Afghan freedom fighters’ who were not Afghans at all. They were an international army paid for by the US, Saudi Arabia, and China, armed by the CIA, and trained, in part, by China's Peoples Liberation Army. We trained an army of 50,000 men from 30 nations to bring down the Soviet Union's most advanced tanks, jets, and helicopters. Why? Our mutual goal was to embarrass a common enemy--the Russians. Chief among the recruits to our proxy Jihad were Osama bin Laden and the founding members of Al Qaeda.

*Pakistan is the nation whose citizens rioted in the streets in 1989 over the title of a novel they didn't like--The Satanic Verses. It was Pakistan's street activists who forced the Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a Fatwa offering five million dollars to the Moslem who killed Salman Rushdie. The Pakistanis were more extreme than the most extremist Islamic leader of his day. And that was fifteen years ago! Since then anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism has grown.

*Pakistan is also the nation that educated a generation of Afghan refugees who later went home to take over their country in the name of Islamic purity and justice. We know those refugees as the Taleban.

*Today Osama bin Laden is one of Pakistan's two biggest pop-culture heroes. The other is "The Father of the Islamic Bomb" Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan. Khan and Osama have reportedly met in Afghanistan. Khan is the weapons expert. Osama is the weapons user.

*Many a Pakistani militant fundamentalist cell identifies itself as an Osama ally. One of the strongest among these Osama-loyalists is arguably Pakistan's most popular leader, Fazlur Rahman Khalil, the man who told 60 Minutes that: ‘God has ordered us to build nuclear weapons.’

According to Syed Adeeb, head of Information Times, a militant Pakistani press outlet based in the National Press Building in Washington DC, "an Urdu-language letter written by Pakistan Army officers on a Pakistan Army letterhead and sent to many members of the Pakistan Parliament" calls, "'Pervez Musharaff and his clique…a band of thieves and looters…imposed on this nation'" by the United States.

It looks like only this embattled head of state stands between Osama and the Islamic submarines, between Osama and the cruise missiles the subs can carry, and the 40 or more nuclear warheads Pakistan has built since it exploded the first Islamic atomic bomb.

And what bin Laden, in a January 2004 speech broadcast on Al Jazeera, called, "a surprising blow…one that…due to its magnitude…will change the international balances of powers…."

“Here's what I strongly suspect is Osama's dream endgame,” Howard told Steele : “Nuke a few key cities in the United States. Blind and devastate the Great Satan. Then watch while France, Germany, Italy, and England capitulate. Capitulate to what? To Osama's dream, his passion, his vision of truth and freedom--to a global Islamic caliphate.”

“Your scenario is credible.”

It didn’t flash, but it does.

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