The city weighed in for the first time Thursday on a local ballot measure that would ban the circumcision of male children, arguing that the proposed law would be unconstitutional if it applies to Jewish mohels but not pediatricians and other doctors.
The city attorney’s office made the argument in response to a lawsuit by a coalition of Jews and Muslims that has asked a California court to remove the initiative from the Nov. 8 ballot. The lawsuit, which names the city and the anti-circumcision activist who qualified the measure, argues that state law bars local governments from restricting medical procedures.
But if a judge accepts that reasoning and excludes only physicians from the ban, the measure would target only religious faiths that practice circumcision and would therefore run afoul of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom, lawyers for the city wrote in court papers.
“San Franciscans cannot be asked to vote on whether to prohibit religious minorities from engaging in a particular religious practice, when the same practice may be performed under nonreligious auspices,” the city’s brief said. “If the court concludes that the measure is pre-empted as applied to medical professionals, then the remaining application is unconstitutional and the court should remove the measure from the ballot entirely.”
The measure would prohibit circumcision on males under the age of 18, making it a misdemeanor punishable by a fine or jail time. It does not carry any religious exemptions.
In their brief, the city’s attorneys said it was unusual for them to be taking a position on a pending initiative and do so “only if a measure is clearly invalid,” as they claim the circumcision ban would be if it is allowed to reach voters with an exemption for doctors. At the same time, they said they were not taking a stand on the larger question of whether the measure would survive legal scrutiny if left intact.
As evidence that the proposed ban “specifically targets the centuries-old Jewish religious practice known as brit milah,” the city’s attorneys cited comic books and cards distributed by the measure’s proponents that “portray the battle against circumcision as one between good, represented by a blonde, blue-eyed superhero and his fair-skinned female friend, and evil, represented by four dark-haired, dark-skinned menacing Jewish characters with prominent noses, sinister expressions and sadistic tendencies.”
(Source: SFC)
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10 Responses
Of course, its a millenia-old religious practice, not a century old. But even with a short term memory of a few hundred years, it should be blatantly obvious where sanctions against bris mila lead.
Excellent! Worthy of note is that the entire San Francisco Board of Supervisors has come out against the ban.
When are ear, nose, lips and belly button piercing going to be prohibited. Frisco leads in everything hedonistic and is prepared to allow mutilation just to get some attention from the opposite sex. If the motivation is decadence its allowed, if its religious, and especially Jewish they try to ban it.
Now that the measure exempts physicians, it is so blatantly anti rel;igious that it unconstitutionality should be obvious even to the most naieve peron in the world.
#2: first, this referendum clearly has some antisemitism behind it (of course, some of the proponents are Jewish but that is nothing new) and it is a silly law. Nevertheless, there is a valid argument being of “bodily integrity” and of self-determination: let people decide what to do with their body once they are adults. Body art (tattoos, rings, piercings, etc.) has been with us for a very long time. Most of it is related to self-image, not as a mechanism for attracting the opposite sex.
It would be a very easy matter for the Democrats to preempt the proposed local law by enacting a state law. We should demand no less (and while we are at it, perhaps call for some form of retaliation against the Dutch for banning kashruth).
What is noteworthy in this story is that elected public officials of a supposedly crazed city, supposedly determined to go to Gehinom, has intervened to protect a religious practice. What it says, in part, is that San Francisco and its elected representatives may not be as crazy as alleged.
And No. 2: You write, in part: “Frisco leads in everything hedonistic and is prepared to allow mutilation just to get some attention from the opposite sex.” You may be the first person in a long time who has alleged that “Frisco” does anything aimed at the “opposite” sex. You gotta get out more.
Again, in a city that is supportive of every kind of plastic surgery and augmentation (where people get horns installed on their head and whiskers to really look like cats), as well as people who elect to change their entire gender via surgery, I think San Fransicko should be sued in a class action suit for bias, harassment, and frivolous legal pursuits.
#7, in true “nfgo3” form, I have to correct you and say it was # 3 who said that; not #2. Peace!
No. 9: Thank you for the correction, and apologies to No. 2. If my “true form” is to make errors, I am deteriorating faster than I think.
And to return the favor to No. 9 (and 8): I think the city supportive of every kind of plastic surgery is Los Angeles, not San Francisco. To quote Joan Rivers (formerly Moskowitz): When people in LA say they have not had plastic surgery, they mean they have not had any today.