Making The Cut?

So, Greens, if you were going to ban the medically unnecessary circumcision of children, then would you also ban their chemical or surgical castration in the name of gender identity? If not, why not? And Rupert Lowe, if you would ban kosher and halal meat, or at least such slaughter in Britain while still permitting the product's importation in which you would no doubt take an interest, then would you also ban the medically unnecessary circumcision of children? If not, why not?

30 per cent or more of lamb and mutton bought in this country is halal. The South Asian Muslim diet, at least, is decidedly meaty. As is at least the Ashkenazi Strictly Orthodox diet, a much smaller but rapidly growing market. Virtually all sheep end up in the human food chain, and disproportionately on the plates of those who kept kosher or halal.

Yet the experimental puberty blockers that have been given to children as young as 10 or even eight had already been banned in sheep, which they had given impaired memory, altered behaviour, enlarged amygdala, and lasting brain damage even once the treatment had stopped. What happened to those sheep? There was already a natural alliance between the opponents of puberty blockers and those who adhered to kosher or halal. It may have found its immediate basis.

"Mum said to me, on 'er deafbed," tweeted Oliver "Del Boy" Kamm 10 years ago. Or words to that effect, "Last thing Christopher Hitchens ever said to me was to urge us to keep on Galloway's case." He deleted the tweet after I had had fun with it on here. Hitchens devoted the third chapter of God Is Not Great to ridiculing "porcophobia", but that can wait, like his excommunication by Kamm's dismissal of opposition to abortion as "morally reprehensible". Against circumcision, Hitchens was robust even by his own standards. Do his flamekeepers, of whom in Britain Kamm is probably preeminent, agree? If not, why not?