San Francisco considers circumcision ban

You took one look at the title of this entry and rolled your eyes, didn't you?

That's an understandable response to a lamentable amount of news about San Francisco. Conspiracy-minded types probably wonder if SF residents are paid by the Koch brothers to make liberalism look as crazy as possible.

The article I read on examiner.com wasn't the first to discuss this issue: it refers to an SFGate piece from November 2010. The SFGate piece was a lighthearted look at the man who is collecting signatures to put the measure on the ballot. The examiner.com piece urges readers to oppose it.

Female circumcision is a brutal and misogynistic action that makes the woman a second-class citizen by denying her the pleasure of sex. It is often done to make sure she does not want to stray from her husband, presupposing she must be prevented from this physically while he need not be.

Male circumcision was originally done for the purpose of cleanliness, and has become a religious ritual of the Jews that set [sic] them apart from those they were to live among. It is comparitively [sic] painless and does not inhibit the one undergoing it for more than a few days.

Each article produced at least one comment (I didn't go through all of the SFGate article's 243) noting that female circumcision is regarded as a religious practice by some, making the disparity between how the two types of genital modification are treated under the law problematic.

One commenter to the examiner.com article made a point that resonated with "I'll make my own choice, thank you"-niks like me:

If an adult's religion compels them [sic] to have part cut off their own body, I say go for it, but when a cruel, brutal, permanent reduction is done to a child, the adults' [sic] reason is neither here nor there. His (or her) body, his (or her) choice.

We allow parents a great deal of leeway to raise their children as they see fit. That freedom, though, isn't unlimited: murdering your children, or killing them through neglect, is not tolerated. What else should not be tolerated?

We allow religions a great deal of leeway to do what they will in the service of ministering to their followers. That freedom, though, isn't unlimited: presumably human sacrifice would not be tolerated. (I don't think the question has come before the Supreme Court.) Where else might a religion's freedom under the U.S. Constitution be abridged?

Putting the previous questions together, how far does the free exercise of religion protect how parents raise their children? Is circumcision of their male children an absolute right for Jewish parents even if the government should find the practice to be harmful? Should the practice be prohibited until boys are old enough to understand what's happening, which likely would have to wait until sometime after puberty?

And if circumcision is permitted for Jewish families, should all the non-Jews have that right too?

The question of banning circumcision touches on weighty and unexpected issues, like freedom of religion versus freedom from religion. Which is preferred by the Constitution?

Broadening our focus a bit, consider abortion. Certain religions consider abortion at any stage of embryonic development to be murder. Is that, or ought that to be, an acceptable reason to outlaw abortion? What if another religious group, or a group of atheists, explicitly did not believe abortion of pre-birth entities (I find the term "unborn children" to be inflammatory) constituted murder?

I could go on, but I think I've made my point:

Banning circumcision doesn't quite seem the obviously stupid idea we thought, does it?

Maybe San Francisco isn't just a land of freaks.