To be blunt, the proposed ban on circumcision in San Francisco is one of the nuttiest ideas we’ve ever heard. And j. being a Bay Area-based publication, that’s saying a lot.
It’s not like leaders in the Bay Area Jewish community –– or anyone else for that matter –– believe San Franciscans will ever vote to criminalize circumcision. The many arguments against a ban, both on religious and constitutional grounds, make too much sense, both to Jews and non-Jews alike.
Proponents of the ban, among whom number quite a few Jews, claim that circumcision is an act of child abuse, an unconscionable theft of normal male sexual function.
Shockingly, they further argue that there should be no exemption for religious purposes, because Jewish boys deserve as much protection as girls — female genital mutilation having been banned years ago.
These are specious arguments.
For one, it is absurd to compare brit milah to female genital mutilation, labeled by agencies such as the United Nations and World Health Organization as an atrocity. It is a truly barbaric, misogynistic North African tradition done for the express purpose of depriving women of their sexuality. Male circumcision has no similar effect.
For all the stats and Very Serious Experts the anti-circumcision crowd might trot out, we must ask the salient, common sense questions: How many men ever complain that they miss having a foreskin? How many insist they have suffered sexually because of circumcision? How could circumcision possibly rate above real child abuse, poverty, environmental ruin and other major issues as a focal point of social activism?
And perhaps most importantly for the Jewish community, how can we allow such an affront to parental rights and religious freedom to go unanswered?
Of course, the answer is we cannot. Easy as it may be to laugh this off now, should the proposed circumcision ban make it all the way to the ballot next year, we are certain the Bay Area Jewish community and its many allies will fight and crush it.
In a free society, anti-circumcision activists have the right, even the duty, to speak their minds and promote their views in the marketplace of ideas. Parents, even Jewish parents, always have the right not to have their sons circumcised should they so chose.
But when these same activists push for a ban, carrying hefty fines and possible jail time for parents and practitioners, they remove themselves from that marketplace of ideas, only to be marked down and dumped in the bargain basement of bad ideas.
We join the chorus of critics condemning this ill-conceived proposition.