Dave Ross Commentary – Listen: San Francisco takes on circumcision

San Francisco, the city that took on plastic bags, and overly-tempting toys in Happy Meals, will now take on circumcision.

It’s official — an initiative to ban circumcision under the age of 18 in San Francisco has enough signatures to get on the November ballot — the biggest step so far for the “INTACTactivist” movement which believes that men should be allowed to reach the age of 18 intact.

There are various arguments that circumcision is more hygienic, and that it prevents AIDS — but the BIG fight will be religious — there is no religious exemption.

For Jews, circumcision is a direct commandment from God. And Jewish leaders have promised a swift legal challenge. So the measure is probably going nowhere.

The big problem is bringing this up AT ALL. Because it’s going to put weird ideas in peoples’ heads.

We saw it last year: the case in Port Angeles, Washington — where a father, going through a divorce, wanted a way to bond himself to his kids and got their permission to take a red-hot branding iron and brand them with the initials “SK” for Seamands Kids.

He was charged with felony assault, but the jury couldn’t bring themselves to convict him. As his lawyer argued, how is it any worse than circumcision?

Yes! If circumcision is legal, why NOT branding? Or tattooing your kid with his long-form birth certificate just in case?

This is the debate we’re in for. Because now we debate EVERYTHING!

I liked it better when most of us men didn’t even KNOW we’d been circumcised. We just assumed we’d been born that way until that first day in the high school locker room, and even then we didn’t want to ask any questions because it meant you’d been looking too closely.

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