San Francisco's “Foreskin Man” comes to the rescue

San Francisco politics is the gift that keeps giving.  Your Editor cannot decide.  Are human beings idiots or just morons?  Read and enjoy.

This has all the makings of a Mel Brooks movie.  I am waiting for Cleavon Little or Gene Wilder to come on the screen.  But it is not to be.  Instead we have modern San Francisco politics.

The backers of a ballot initiative in San Francisco aiming to ban circumcision in that city have consistently maintained that their efforts are not anti-Semitic.

But the “Foreskin Man” comic book, which was written and edited in 2010 by the founder of a San Diego group supporting efforts to ban circumcision in San Francisco and Santa Monica, gives further credence to the accusation that so-called intactivists are in fact motivated by anti-Semitism says the Jewish Journal.

A panel from "Foreskin Man," featuring the comic book's villain, "Monster Mohel." (Courtesy www.foreskinman.com)

“The imagery in ‘Foreskin Man’ is functionally Anti-Semitic,” Abby Michelson Porth, associate director of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), said. “The motives of the proponents of this ban are questionable given their direct connection with “Foreskin Man.”

"The images, in addition to being offensive, are not particularly original," she said.  "They're reminiscent of millennia-old stereotypes that have been used to persecute and oppress Jews."

The Anti-Defamation League, which was established to fight anti-Semitism, issued a statement Friday calling the book's publication "an advocacy campaign taken to a new low." A spokeswoman for San Francisco's Jewish Community Relations Council called it "outrageous."

The story told in the second issue of “Foreskin Man,” which is available on its website, centers on the story of Sarah and Jethro Glick and their newborn son. Sarah thought that she and her husband had agreed not to circumcise their son, but Jethro had other plans. He secretly invited the villain, “Monster Mohel,” to circumcise “little Glick.”

On the website foreskinman.com, Monster Mohel, a bearded man with a black hat on his head and a tallis around his neck, is described this way: “Nothing excites Monster Mohel more than cutting into the penile flesh of an eight-day-old infant boy.”

Insiders claim Mel Brooks is already doing the screenplay

Last month, San Francisco city officials announced that the backers of an initiative to prohibit circumcision in the city had collected enough signatures to put the measure to voters in November 2011.

In response to a question about his motivations, Hess said that he and his supporters are, first and foremost, human rights activists.

“We do what we do because we strongly believe that no one has the right to cut off part of another person’s body without their consent,” Hess wrote in an email. “We believe that amputating part of a boy’s penis is no different in principle than amputating part of a girl’s vulva. If you ask any activist in Africa why she is trying to stop the practice of female genital mutilation, I suspect that her answers would be very similar to ours.”

“As far as the anti-Semitism charge, I might understand such an accusation if our proposed legislation applied to everyone except Jews. That would be like saying we care about all boys except the Jewish ones,” Hess wrote.

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