[ ARC forum 2 ]
Written by Rood at 14 Oct 2002 21:07:36: The actual issue, not qualifications, identity or credentials.
Having been away from this forum for a month while visiting my mother and while attending a school reunion in Wisconsin, I was irritated to find upon my return that the same dreary questions concerning the qualifications of several members of the forum are taking up an inordinant amount of time and space, as they have for months. I have largely ignorned this controversy because there seemed more important issues at hand with precious little time available to deal with them. Enough is enough, however.
From my perspective the intent of these questions is actually an attempt to discredit the good advice and information given by certain members of the forum, not by the results, which seem to be uniformly of benefit to the individuals seeking help, but through the possible absence of parental or professional involvement. This attempt is patently offensive.
If the participants in this witch hunt would look around them they would find real child abuse, actual physical harm done to helpless children. What obscure agenda leads them to question advice, which by all accounts 'works', while ignoring the horrors of genital mutilation.
Even Charles II has surrendered the fight regarding Routine Infant Circumcision, though he and others on pro-circ internet sites advocate circumcision for children as young as twelve, based on the child's own limited understanding. Here are men advocating the genital mutilation of immature chidren. The difference between the two camps couldn't be more stark and revealing. One group works to help young men and boys to understand and facilitate use of the natural body given to them at birth, the other works to genitally mutilate that body, based on a purely erotic interest in the genitals of young males.
Rather than continuing the endless debate about years of experience, of professional credentials, or of identity, we must clearly state these issues, and expose the truth. Otherwise we waste everyone's time.