In a potential blow to the proposed San Francisco circumcision ban, the city’s top lawyer has concluded it is unconstitutional to ban the practice as a religious ritual, but allow it as a medical procedure.
The measure, now headed toward the Nov. 8 ballot, would ban nearly all infant circumcisions.
Worse than the homosexualists attack on circumcision – the California legislature has just passed a law that children must be indoctrinated toward approval of (proven risky/dangerous) ‘gay’ standards and practices of sexual behavior – and parents may not opt their children out of this unhealthy propaganda.
http://transfigurations.blogspot.com/2011/07/california-passes-bill-mandating-pro.html
The irony of the post-modern world is that it is intolerant of diversity. But I’m certain that the minions of post-modernity fail to see the irony.
Regarding the issue brought up by St. Nikao, it will be interesting to see if home schooling and alternatives to public ed become more popular in the Golden State.
Note that there is no local option and that the curriculum is mandated in Sacramento not by the board of ed. Unaccountable politicians equal bizarre laws.
By the time a kid is 18 years old he has amassed a list of 500 reasons how/why their parents screwed them up and ruined their lives. Forcing a kid to take piano lessons is generally much higher on the list than having been circumcised as a baby without their permission. I suggest these folks direct their attentions elsewhere. 🙂
I predict that home-schooling……approved or not……will soar in our state, if our fool governor signs this godawful bill.
San Francisco. No toys in ‘happy meals’. American car companies relocated OUT of the city. Tried to legislate cell phone radiation levels resulting in the loss of the National Wireless Association convention. Mandatory trash compacting. Strict restrictions on wood burning stoves and fireplaces. Banned plastic grocery bags. Now the Jewish population may decide to leave because of THIS proposed law. Before too long, only old hippies will be left in the city by the bay.
Jim Elliott
Florida
Catholic Mom is right! We should all get behind a law that forbids parents from thrusting music upon minors. No piano lessons until they turn 18 — LOL
The “no toys in Happy Meals” thing I completely agree with. It’s really awful. They package a “meal” that consists of total garbage (meaning it consists of the worst/cheapest items available at McDonald’s) and then they license a toy which can ONLY be acquired by purchasing a Happy Meal. [Usually a tie-in with the most recent blockbuster kid’s movie.] The toy falls apart by the time you get to the car in any event.
Fortunately my kids are past this age now but there was a time when we couldn’t go into a McDonalds without them launching into a long whine/beg to PLEASE PLEASE buy a Happy Meal so they could have that toy.
I have explained how the world works to my kids from the time they could walk and I explained to them clearly that the toy was a trick to get them (me) to buy a bunch of junk food they didn’t actually want to eat. I told them I would be happy to take the price of a Happy Meal and buy them a real toy at a toy store but I wouldn’t let McDonalds use them to manipulate me to buy food we didn’t want in exchange for a 25 cent toy that wouldn’t make it home. They actually got the idea pretty well. We only go to McDonald’s in “emergencies” (stuck on the road without food, no time to stop at a real restaurant) so we’re not there that often anyway. Now my kids have decided they like Burger King over McDonalds anyway. Burger King has a very clever way of packaging its “Happy Meals.” It puts together a package of food that the kids like which includes healthy food items (apples) that the parents want to buy.
McDonalds does the same thing in terms of options in the kid’s meal, CatholicMom. And we’ve always preferred BK over Macky D’s. At one time we had quite a collection of toys, even displaying them in a cardboard ‘shadowbox’ on the wall — until a very obnoxious friend convinced my daughter that the toys should be played with and not decorative.
But what to buy should be a PARENT’s choice, not a government legislated mandate. No one forces a parent to buy their children a Happy Meal. No matter how persuasive a child may be, the parent is still in charge (we have two children, now one an adult, and one a teen in High School).
Jim Elliott
Florida
Marketing directed at children is subject to regulation. For example, cigarette companies cannot create marketing which appears to be directed at children or teens. Other forms of marketing to children are also subject to regulation on the basis that children are not free, independent, economic agents capable of making rational decisions. Happy Meals by no means represents as isolated incident of regulating marketing directed at children.
In the case of the Happy Meal there is a blatant attempt not to market the product per se (“hey kids, this is yummy food!) but to link the product to a marketing-come on such that the kids will pressure the parent to buy the item. Having bought the Happy Meal the parents will then not throw it in the garbage (which they should) and buy something else, but give it to the kid. So now kids are eating the worst of the worst garbage food because of a marketing ploy directed not at the purchaser of the items but at kids and which has nothing to do with the desirability of the food itself in the first place. Were this directed at adults it would of course be 100% legal. But the law can keep you from manipulating children in this manner.
We’ll have to disagree on this one. I see nothing wrong with it.
What I meant to say was, I see nothing wrong with the practice of offering a toy with the mean that requires governmental interference taking over for parental responsibility.
“mean” = “meal”. Sorry.