Couldn’t resist the post title.
Via L.A. Times:
San Francisco residents will not be voting in November on whether to prohibit circumcision after all, according to a tentative ruling by a Superior Court judge made public Wednesday.
Judge Loretta M. Giorgi ordered the city’s director of elections to strike the measure from the ballot because she said it was “expressly preempted” by the California Business and Professions Code.
Under that statute, only the state is allowed to regulate medical procedures, and “the evidence presented is overwhelmingly persuasive that circumcision is a widely practiced medical procedure,” the ruling said.
The Judge confirmed the tentative ruling today.
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Comments
Ah, that lefty city! Removing the foreskin is crazy, but sucking the infant’s brains out and crushing its skull is A-OK!
Nipped in the bud?
Has the SanFran City Council voted to ban the largely Muslim practice of FGM? Just wondering?
I wish I could be happy about this, but the fact that the decision is based on state medical regulations as opposed to the FIRST AMENDMENT makes me weep for our country.
I must have missed the day in civics class where we were told you could justify a medical (or any other) kind of procedure by claiming freedom of religion.
The state has the ability to regulate behaviors based on the public good – this is why people can’t legally practice polygamy and start claiming multiple wives, no matter what their religion says. We outlaw female genital mutilation, even though there are some Muslims who think that that’s a violation of their religious traditions.
The judge in this case did America a service by putting through a basic legal justification that didn’t allow someone else to piggy-back God-knows-what through the precedent such a ruling could have set.
That being said the ban on male circumcision in San Francisco certainly seemed to be fueled by Antisemitism. Anyone who saw that “Foreskin Man” comic put out by proponents of the ban could hardly dispute that Jews were being singled out in a way hardly seen outside of Middle Eastern newspapers.
I’m still not convinced that there exists a valid State interest in prohibiting polygamy/polyandry/polyamory
If you want to discuss further read and reply in https://legalinsurrection.com/2011/07/polyamory-at-least-be-honest-about-it/
Since this thread isn’t more than tangentially related.
The federal government already bans female genital mutilation. Muslims as well as Jews do religious-based male circumcision. My own feelings on the subject have evolved over the years with attaining more information. It’s a difficult subject to keep emotions out of. Here is information from Doctors Against Circumcision http://www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/ and an article by Miriam Pollack from Jewish Women Speak Out at http://www.noharmm.org/pollack.htm
I left my part in San Fransnipco.