To the Editor:
Do not bet for one minute that the proposed ban on circumcision in San Francisco won’t pass.
Given the long history of intactivist/genital integrity participation in Gay Pride and Leather Pride parades in San Francisco and now elsewhere (as in the YouTube video seen here); the very low hospital circumcision rate in the Bay Area (below 10 percent, compared to about 33 percent nationally, and even this has declined sharply over the last few years); and the organized campaign of MGMBill.org and many other groups protesting so-called "male genital mutilation," my bet is the loony-left voters of San Francisco pass this by a decent margin and it winds up in court.
This is only the beginning. More draconian legislation that would have carried 14-year penalties for both parents and mohels was given a hearing in Massachusetts this year. An article in Commentary magazine more than 10 years ago details the threat to the Jewish community of the intactivist movement.
Since then it has become much worse. And with the failure of more liberal Jewish organizations to vigorously defend the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause and their un-Jewish, absolutist, "woman’s body, woman’s right" position on abortion, they have opened the door for those who assert "his body, his choice" in seeking to ban brit milah.
Stephen Mendelsohn
New Britain, Conn.
