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Since the current stats lean toward their being real health benefits for circumcised males, if this foolishness were to pass, then poetic justice will require a class action lawsuit against the City of San Francisco by every male born there who didn’t get the procedure.

That or some over-zealous Child Welfare employee to start seizing kids for child endangerment because the parents didn’t have them circumcised.

Isn’t circumcision just removing a “lump of cells?” Isn’t that what they call a fetus? According to these people, the difference between abortion and circumcision is what, exactly?
If they ban circumsicion, then there will be back-alley circumcisionists using wire coat hangers.

Schmucks.

Since the current stats lean toward their being real health benefits for circumcised males…

Yet the vast majority of professional medical associations don’t currently recommend the procedure, many of them reversing from earlier positions…

Will the TSA be performing the necessary and repeated inspections required to ensure total compliance?

I agree with Mojo!

I’m also suspicious–though I’m not sure if people who aren’t Jewish will be as sensitive to this as I am–that this is motivated by anti-Semitism. In San Francisco, anti-Semitism is usually manifested by unrelenting Israel bashing. People who have no opinion about other tragic conflicts throughout the world, for some reason, will stick their neck out and form uninformed opinions about the situation in Israel. Banning circumcision is simply a way to get back at the Jews.

I have a business in Sunnyvale, CA. All four principals are Jewish. We will never do business with San Francisco again, or even set foot in it, if this passes.

(Another “shocking” thing about San Francisco–they will also stick their neck out to support the Dalai Lama, even though his views on abortion and same-sex marriage align him more America’s religious right than San Francisco liberals. They just wave their hands over his positions on these issues.)

My step-daughter was against circumcision and her son developed an infection under the foreskin. The boy squealed like a pig when the doctor scraped out the material trapped in the fold.

Since the evidence for the procedure is neither favorable nor unfavorable about circumcision, a decision either way would be Religious in nature. San Francisco needs to focus on the nutty viewns against vaccinations.

“Since the current stats lean toward their being real health benefits for circumcised males”

uh, no. That was “believed” several decades ago and has long been discredited. It does nothing, except reduce pleasure, which is exactly why religious groups who don’t want people to have a good time require it.
That foreskin is there for a purpose, and that purpose is to keep the sensitive tissue of the sex organs protected and moist.

Of course if you have taboos against touching them, you’re not going to keep them clean, leading to infections.
In case of such infections, circumcission may be a medical necessity to save a life.

There should be no religious excemption, as it’s precisely in order to prevent religious groups mutilating their children that such bills are needed!
In fact a religious excemption would be discriminatory towards non-religious people as well as advocating child abuse by religious groups as well as forcing people who want their children to be so abused to join one of those religious groups, thus preventing freedom of choice by those children.

We should outlaw Baptism!

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3069604/Baby-drowned-during-baptism.html

This initiative shows that the convergence between leftism and Antisemitism proceeds apace.

Cf. article in today’s WSJ entitled “Circumcision saved my life,” by a woman with an HIV+ husband:

http://j.mp/mRRKtl

I don’t think these health arguments really matter too much.

The fact is: Jewish males are required to be circumcised.

It’s a good thing San Francisco is so tolerant of gender and sex issues…

J.T., I see by your argument that you support banning ear and other body piercings and tattoos. Interesting.

Bumper:

“… poetic justice will require a class action lawsuit against the City of San Francisco by every male born there who didn’t get the procedure.”

What about every male born who did get the procedure but doesn’t want it?

Mr. Olson:

That WSJ editorial is unconvincing. Ms. Cole engages in a post hoc verification that her husband’s circumcision saved her life that she can’t prove. Her assumptions require correlation to equal causation. There are studies looking at serodiscordant couples and circumcision. The results are mixed.

More to the point, being an American, presumably her husband was circumcised as an infant. The studies she cites (with “strongly suggest”) were all conducted on adult volunteers. Ethically, that is quite different from non-therapeutic child circumcision. The proposal in S.F. would not restrict voluntary adult circumcision for any reason. Her husband’s death is sad and unfortunate, but it doesn’t make for good public policy for healthy children.

I’m only speculating, but if circumcision were some old Native American tradition, instead of something “Jewish,” the haters in SF wouldn’t be opposed to it.

Actually, some of the most prominent intactivists are Jewish and arguably the populations that are most antisemitic are from circumcising cultures themselves. Anyone ever hear of Islam? If anything the proposed bill will protect Jewish boys as well as Christian ones and in that sense the circumcision ban is actually progressively pro-semitic. Think about it.

Simple fix:

As soon as you turn 18 sue your parents for any permanent screw ups.

Could be interesting:

Circumcision
Religious training
forbidding certain activities considered normal
etc.

Whoa!!!! I just realized. If we ban all permanent modification to the human body before the age of consent, the government will never be able to tattoo our social security numbers on us.