Oh Howard. How very very wrong you are. I don't want, or perhaps need to argue with you about aesthetics (so a rabbi knows what a good dick is meant to look like) or tradition (bring back bullfights and witch drowning I say) or identity (yo for dogma). I'm just going to say one word... Pain. And not just your insanely unscientific statement that babies suffer less than adults (if they can't put pain into words, then it clearly doesn't hurt), but the fact - yes FACT - that my Jewish circumcised dick is constantly, and I mean constantly, in discomfort ranging from irritation to pain, thanks to rubbing on underwear. I won't go into the geometry of the situation, but believe me I have tried everything, and I mean everything, to have no discomfort. Need more info? Read this www.circumcision.org

So a big thanks Dad for naively doing what your own ignorant line-up of Dads did... They Fuck You Up Your Mum And Dad... Thanks ancient beardies who (according to Desmond Morris and others) thought they were symbolically cutting off the head of the serpent. 57 years of re-adjusting underwear dozens of times every single day, hating cycling, walking, running, sports generally. Sometimes in tears. Constantly embarrassment by adjusting clothing. But constantly joyful that I resisted family pressure to mutiliate my own sons. So now they, like you oh lucky lucky Howard, won't ever risk the unpleasantness I will endure for the rest of my life.

So please. Before seeking artistic reasons to condone butchery, or adopting literary justifications as a substitute for science, please think of me and my dick and those of my countless companions who also shyly suffer in silence thanks to generations of thoughtless and cruel idiots whose fear of offending their communities and ducking thunderbolts makes them sharpen their knives.

You're smarter than this Howard. It's wrong and it's pointless - in more ways than one (small attempt at levity to invoke sympathy).