<p>Excerpt from the June 11 New York Times
[quote]
The operation in the private clinic off the Champs-</p>
<p>Oh those wacky Muslims. What a great religion.</p>
<p>I read an article about this a few weeks ago. Apparently it’s fairly common in the US among conservative Christians. “Born-again” virginity, I suppose.</p>
<p>
I can see it now, “certificates of virginity” for sale on eBay. </p>
<p>This sort of her minds me of the car dealers offering “Certified Pre-Owned” cars.</p>
<p>
Has it occured? Yes. Fairly common? No.</p>
<p>I’ll try to find my source later, but apparently it is increasingly common.</p>
<p>barrons, I think it’s culture more than religion.</p>
<p>I think the two are one in most cases. And don’t forget the “honor” killings.</p>
<p>You mean the fundamentalist Christian abortion clinic bombings?</p>
<p>I’ve also read these surgeries are increasingly popular in the US (and other parts of Western/Central Europe)- even among non-Christian and non-Moslem women.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that for a minute. The absence of a religious reason for such a surgery negates virtually any reason for having it. And at thousands of dollars per procedure, I very much doubt that there are many American conservative Christians who go to the trouble of having it done.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>There is a culture, within the Middle East and North Africa, that supports and commits honor killings as a matter of course. It is a real and ongoing problem that takes the lives of thousands of young girls in numerous countries </p>
<p>Unless you think that there is a culture within American Christianity that supports bombing abortion clinics as a matter of course, your analogy is at best irrelevant and at worst slanderous of a whole lot of Americans that believe different than you do. </p>
<p>This is a very poor manifestation of tolerance and understanding. </p>
<p>Fwiw, I am not a fundamentalist Christian and generally find the odd one I run into, given time, insufferable.</p>
<p>So, are Americans supposed to hold it against all of Barack Obama’s associates that one of them was involved with putting a bomb in a women’s bathroom at the Pentagon? </p>
<p>It is absurd in both cases and should be called out as such.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to cause trouble, but this banal-bigotry gets tiresome…even when directed against Muslims or atheists (not here, of course, against atheists, but elsewhere even atheists).</p>
<p>Woodwork: I was responding to barrons’ sarcastic slander towards Islam and his further (and even more insulting) implication that honor killings are a direct result of the religion, since the surrounding culture is “often one and the same.”</p>
<p>The many Muslims I know from all over the world who condemn honor killings thoroughly would be disgusted by barrons’ implication that their religion is responsible, in just the same way that you reacted to my abortion clinic bombing reference.</p>
<p>Do they have a procedure for men too?</p>
<p>I was actually just at a talk given by a past president of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology in which he discussed “cosmetic” procedures (which he included a wide gamut of things from vaginal reconstruction to microdermabrasion like you might find at a spa) being done by OB/GYN’s. </p>
<p>He mentioned a lot of interesting stuff - apparently there are a number of practitioners across the country doing things called laser vaginal rejuvenation. Hymenoplasties weren’t explicitly mentioned, but I have a feeling he’d lump them in there. </p>
<p>It all goes a lot further than “the extra stitch” one of my preceptors in family medicine joked about giving his OB patients when he repaired any tearing from a vaginal birth…</p>
<p>1of42,</p>
<p>I understand your reaction, and appreciate many of your posts, but the comparison is still very bad. </p>
<p>I have family that is Muslim…a lot: Many still in the Middle East; some in Sweden some in Canada and some here in America. And as you say, they are appalled that these honor killings go on and have, regrettably, gone on for a very long time. They know what it makes of their religion on the world stage and they know the horror this creates in the lives of thousands of young girls. But unlike your analogy with Christians, they see this as a very real problem in modern Islam and a mighty blow to their beliefs and culture. </p>
<p>Bombing abortion clinics is not a crisis of Christianity. In Islam, honor killings are a crisis of critical proportions.</p>
<p>In any case, I have seen this propaganda used far too often by those who delight in bashing the beliefs of those they will do no more than condescend to. People of faith.</p>
<p>What’s depressing is not the indignity, and the exorbitant fees for these procedures, but that women have to lie to their husbands, and they will both be living a lie.</p>
<p>
I think you meant libel, not slander. Slander is spoken. Libel is written. I usually just use defamation which covers both. FWIW. </p>
<p>I didn’t see any sarcastic libel in Barron’s comment. Truth is a defense to defamation and I think Woodwork is correct that honor killings are far more accepted in the middle east than are bombings among American Chrisitians. Abortion bombings are rare and are ciminal actions for which the bombers will spend a long time in jail. I don’t see any significant acceptance by American christians abortion bombings.</p>