Circumcision has come under fire lately. Actor Russell Crowe went on a Twitter rant last month about circumcision. Crowe started the tweet with “Circumcision is barbaric and stupid. Who are you to correct nature? Is it real that GOD requires a donation of foreskin? Babies are perfect.” It got even nastier as his second tweet, calling circumcision “Hygenic?” then said if people wanted to be hygienic they should sew up their…um, butts, only he didn’t put it quite as nicely.
Crowe quickly issued a public apology, saying “wasn’t intending offense, certainly wasn’t intending to provide fodder for lazy journalists. I can’t apologize for my heartfelt belief.” He went on to say Twitter was a great way to communicate and like everyone else, he has personal beliefs, but he has a love for people of all nationalities and apologized again for anything he said that “caused distress.”
Apparently Crowe wasn’t the only one who was con-circumcision. A proposal was to appear on the November San Francisco ballot to ban circumcision. How did something like this even come up? Apparently, more than 7,700 residents of San Francisco signed to have the initiative come up for vote (only 7,168 were required). Some advocacy groups feel the surgery is a form of male genital mutilation and a violation of human rights.
The ban would prohibit males younger than 18 from being circumcised. If caught performing the procedure, the doctor would be fined up to $1,000 or serve one year in jail. Worse yet, the initiative offered no religious exemptions.
Needless to say, many weren’t happy with the possibility of this circumcision ban. Jews and Muslims both considered this ban a violation of constitutional rights.
As it turns out, all the uproar was for naught because today, Superior Court Judge Loretta Giorgi ordered that the ban be removed from the city ballot. She said circumcision was “a widely practiced medical procedure.” Maybe as an out, she a medical procedure such as this should be regulated by states, not individual cities.