A Penis With Personality

You know what will happen when a bunch of city supervisors over at your local City Hall enact a law which completely takes away your freedom of choice under the apparent guise of them knowing better than you? That's right. People near and far are going to want to enact another one which limits your freedom to choose even more. I'm not talking things like abortion and guns here, but that's only because I'm talking about San Francisco. No, when you factor San Francisco into the mix, you have to include wacky things like Happy Meals and the male foreskin. Wait. What now?

Yeah, there's a sentence that I never thought I'd type. At least, I never thought that I'd have the opportunity to include both 'Happy Meal' and 'foreskin' in the same sentence and have them both be relevant. But thanks to San Francisco, such a sentence AND such a concept is now possible. Try not to hang yourself until you finish reading. (I know how tough that will be. I had to resist the urge to hang myself until I finished typing.)

As you may or may blissfully not be aware, last week, San Francisco passed a law that forbids fast food outlets from giving out a toy with a meal that is not deemed "healthy". Personally, I think the easiest way around that law, rather than succumb to what San Francisco thinks that you should do and/or eat, would be to sell the toy and include the meal for free. There's no law against that. Yet. But I digress. Now, there might be a measure on the ballot next year "...that would make it a “misdemeanor to circumcise, excise, cut or mutilate the…genitals” of a person under 18." So sayeth CBS San Francisco. Good Lord, people.

I'm all for the not being able to mutilate genitals. Don't get me wrong, as that sounds like a fairly reasonable provision. However, to need a separate law for it would be, you guessed it, completely ridiculous. That's because you typically don't define a medical procedure as 'mutilation'. But back to the foreskin. (Again, a sentence I never thought I'd type.) The author of this asinine bill is a one Lloyd Schofield who claims that the circumcision IS genital mutilation. Uh-huh. OK, then. What else?

He seems to be going on the belief that circumcision is a religious practice. And yes, it has been for many years and still is in some instances I would assume. But I would be surprised if the majority of circumcisions that are being performed today are being done so because of a religious belief. I would also be surprised if the majority of people thought of circumcision as a religious rite as opposed to seeing it as a medical procedure. I checked with the CDC (at their website) and they don't have any guidelines on whether or not a circumcision should be performed for health reasons. According to the CBS article "Scientists with the Centers for Disease Control are still studying whether circumcisions are healthier, and have promised recommendations to the public." Oh, good. A foreskin promise. That's something to look forward to.

Haven't we always been told (or taught) that circumcision cuts down (pun probably not intended, but completely inevitable) on diseases and is just cleaner or easier to clean? I don't know the specifics, not ever having had a foreskin, I'm just going on what I've learned in various health/anatomy classes. I'm also going to go with what was on Seinfeld when Elaine asked Jerry if he had ever seen one that wasn't circumcised. He said he hadn't and she went on to tell him that it wasn't good. "No, had no face, no personality, very dull. It was like a martian. But hey, that's me." Do you want a weenie with no personality ? I don't think you do.

The point here (surprisingly enough) isn't about the penis. It isn't even about the foreskin. It's about the government trying to ooch its way into every aspect of the life of a private citizen and the decision that they should be making ON THEIR OWN. You don't need to the government to tell you what kind of food you can buy for your child. You're supposed to be responsible enough to make that decision on your own. Yes, yes. I realize that we are surrounded by morons. And I also realize that we are surrounded by morons with children. But we can't let the freedoms of the capable be taken away by the moronic. Technically, the moronic are supposed to suffer as a result of their poor choices. I realize that consequences are practically non-existent in a socialist society, but we're not totally there yet, so there's still hope.

I'm semi-interested in whether or not the author of this bill has had his snipped off. I don't know why I'm semi-interested in that, but I just am. Regardless, it doesn't mean that he gets to try to dictate (again, no pun intended, but pretty funny none the less) what others do with theirs. Why are people not up in arms about the very thought of this happening? I'm not exactly sure, but that alone frightens me more than the possible ban on circumcision does.