Things that affect a boy's mind.

A divorced man has won a lawsuit that he brought to prevent his 9-year-old son from getting circumcised:

The couple's 2003 divorce decree gave the father the right to be consulted before the boy underwent any "extraordinary" non-emergency procedure.

The father said he believed surgical removal of the boy's foreskin could cause long-term physical and psychological harm. The child's mother wanted the procedure to prevent recurring infections. She testified that the boy had suffered five bouts of painful inflammation and had begged her to help him.

Oh, yeah, and having your father enlist the power of the state to assert dominion over your penis -- that's not going to affect your mind.

Here's another article. Things are a bit more complicated. The judge, Circuit Court Judge Jordan Kaplan said, analyzed the medical evidence and seems to have decided based on an insufficient showing of physical benefit in the boy's particular condition. Moreover, the boy had his own lawyer, and the lawyer recommended that decision. And then there's this:

The eight-month dispute took some nasty turns. [The mother's lawyer] charged that the father did not care about the boy's health but feared his ex-wife and her new husband were trying to convert the boy to Judaism.

The father's attorneys hinted that the mother's aim was to spite her ex-husband and please her current husband, who is Jewish.

The boy's stepfather and stepbrother are both circumcised, while the biological parents are Catholic immigrants from Eastern European countries where circumcision is rare.

But Kaplan said he did not address "issues of ethnicity or religious beliefs relative to circumcision" because the parents did not raise them in their legal pleadings.

So what seems most important is excluded from the judge's view because neither parent wants to get into that. The poor kid! Not only are his parents divorced and still fighting, they're fighting over his penis! There's nothing the judge can do about that.