Laws
The legality of tongue splitting will vary greatly depending on the country and within those countries, individual states or territories. Some examples are given below, but do not encompass all the laws regarding this subject.
Some branches of the U.S. military ban body modifications that detract from a professional military image and explicitly include tongue splitting or forking as examples.
Illinois was the first state in the U.S. to make tongue splitting illegal in 2003. Since then New York, Delaware, and Texas have enacted laws that either ban the practice, ban the procedure on minors without parental consent or restricted it to being performed by only doctors and/or dentists.
In 2009, the Australian state of Victoria enacted a ban on splitting the tongues of minors.
Read more about this topic: Tongue Splitting
Famous quotes containing the word laws:
“Laws can be wrong and laws can be cruel. And the people who live only by the law are both wrong and cruel.”
—Ardel Wray. Mark Robson. Thea (Ellen Drew)
“I have not yet learned to live, that I can see, and I fear that I shall not very soon. I find, however, that in the long run things correspond to my original idea,—that they correspond to nothing else so much; and thus a man may really be a true prophet without any great exertion. The day is never so dark, nor the night even, but that the laws at least of light still prevail, and so may make it light in our minds if they are open to the truth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is less need of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.”
—Charles Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1689–1755)