Why is it OK to pierce, but not to tattoo?

Published online on Monday, Oct. 05, 2009

I don't know which is more painful -- a piercing or a tattoo -- because I don't have either. Circumcision must hurt like hell. I had one, but that was 55 years ago, and I don't remember.

One particular tattoo is in the news, from Fresno to points all over: a quarter-sized pawprint inked on a 7-year-old boy's hip at the behest of his father, a local Bulldog gang member.

The father and his street-tat-practicing buddy, also a Bulldog, faced accusations that could have put them in prison for life, but Superior Court Judge Hilary Chittick tossed out charges of aggravated mayhem.

The two still face the possibility of significant prison time because the judge kept intact charges of willful cruelty to a child and a gang enhancement for promoting the Bulldog gang via the tattoo.

Outrage to the father's actions rightfully has been loud and voluminous -- reflecting both his son's young age and a public fed up with criminal gangs.

But lawyers for the father, Enrique Gonzalez, 27, and the tattooer, Travis Gorman, 21, raised an interesting issue during the preliminary hearing. Under questioning, prosecution witness Dr. Carmela Sosa, the boy's pediatrician, said that her "guess" was that circumcision was more painful than a tattoo.

There is another difference. Circumcision legally can be performed on a minor in California without a child's consent, and is an accepted cultural and religious practice. It's illegal, however, to tattoo anyone younger than 18 in our state -- regardless of whether the child or the parents are OK with the inking.

Here's the inconsistency, not just with California law, but the law in many states. If a parent wants a child to be pierced, the child is getting pierced. It doesn't matter how much the child screams, kicks and cries, the piercing goes on -- in the doctor's office or at a discount store.

Two years ago, in a story that attracted some notoriety but nothing like the headlines of the gang dad, a woman called police in Wichita, Kan., while witnessing a 5-year-old girl cry her eyes out during an ear-piercing at Wal-Mart.

What did the customer get for alerting authorities to what she thought was child abuse?

She was asked to leave the store and told that she could no longer shop there.

Understand: The piercing of a minor in Kansas -- just like in California -- is legal, even when the piercing is forcibly administered.

Now, I'm not defending what the gang-banger dad did to his kid. It was despicable. Nor am I buying his lawyer's defense that the kid actually wanted the tattoo.

If the kid had said, "I want to drive to the store to grab a soda," would the dad have handed him the keys? Well, maybe Gonzalez would have, but no rational father would.

In addition, a much bigger crime was inflicted by the father on his son. What dad envisions a path of crime, drugs, prison and early death for his child -- much less promotes it? What dad makes the thug life the first option for his own flesh and blood?

Only somebody who has no idea of what it means to be a real father.

But this story, sad and revolting as it is, should cause us to contemplate some of the things that parents do to their kids in the name of religion, culture and fashion.