Back away from the penis!

San Francisco on the cutting edge

The voters of the City and County of San Francisco have placed a proposed circumcision ban on the November general election ballot. It would make it illegal to remove the foreskins of minors without a showing of medical necessity. It would not, however, have any impact on adult males who wish to have their penises clipped. The rationale is simple: Baby boys cannot give informed consent.

The reaction to the ballot initiative is unsurprisingly shrill. Here's the opening paragraph of an opinion piece by Rabbi Gil Leeds, which was published on May 20, 2011, in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Freedom of religion, enshrined over two centuries ago by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, is now subject to a vote with the certification in San Francisco of the referendum on circumcision for the November ballot. The vote will empower a secular majority to impose its will, and ban one of the oldest religious traditions known to humanity. When religious belief and practice become subject to vote by the majority of a city council, government agency or referendum, it endangers all of our rights and freedoms.

The proposed legislation contains no religious exemptions, so the traditional Jewish bris ceremony could no longer be practiced in San Francisco if the circumcision ban were enacted. That is why Leeds frames it as an attack on religious freedom. This got me to thinking.

What does religious tradition protect? How far can it go? Leeds correctly points out that male circumcision is a very old religious practice, so it definitely fits under the mantle of tradition, at least for Jews. It's also long been considered normative for American males, quite apart from religious practice. As a culture, we're inured to it and most people take it in stride as expected and unexceptional. While a few circumcised men have complained about having been robbed of their foreskins, most clipped males appear to be content with their condition. It hasn't been a major controversy.

On the other hand, female circumcision is widely condemned as genital mutilation and is against the law in the United States and the target of an international campaign to suppress it. In fact, “circumcision” is rather a misnomer for the procedure(s) applied to young girls in those cultures that practice it. The term comprises a broad range of actions, from reduction or amputation of the clitoris to wholesale excision of the labia. The most extreme form involves infibulation, stitching up the vaginal passage to make it smaller and to ensure the virginity of the victim; the procedure may be reversed when she is properly married off.

Female “circumcision” is an ancient practice that is done in secret in places like the United Kingdom and the United States, nations in which it is legally banned. Members of immigrant families may go to great lengths to ensure that their daughters are genitally cut so that future suitors may be assured of their respectability. The UK and US make no allowance for the ancient tradition, deeming it a violation of basic human rights and labeling it as “female genital mutilation.”

The sponsors of the anti-circumcision measure in San Francisco took a page from the international campaign to protect girls when they titled their proposal as the “San Francisco Male Genital Mutilation” initiative. The city attorney toned that down to the “Male Circumcision” measure, but Leeds the mohel is unmollified:

The proposal's backers are trying to deceive the voters by labeling it a “ban on genital mutilation.” Honesty would have demanded they called it a ban on circumcision. By using such a toxic term as mutilation, they hope to garner support from an unsuspecting public.

My question is this: How is cutting off part of a little boy's penis not a “genital mutilation”? Because our society is inured to it? Because some people practice it as a religious rite? Because it's not as grotesque as the female version? Because there are some supposed health benefits?

What if a religious sect insisted it was their right to practice infibulation on their infant daughters? Would we be violating their freedom of religion if we refused to allow it? (We have clearly already decided that question, haven't we?)

Circumcised males can take comfort in being in the majority and having undergone a procedure that has long been considered unremarkable and of which they haven't the slightest recollection. They understandably react negatively at being told that they were “mutilated” at birth. It's a charged term. At the same time, the uncircumcised minority cringe at the thought of having their foreskins lopped off and marvel that their clipped brethren can be so complacent about having lost theirs. It's what you're used to, I suppose.

The religious aspect doesn't faze people for whom religion is just a superstitious practice that gets more respect than it deserves. Rabbi Leeds hung his argument on the right of people to clip their sons' penises in honor of a supposed covenant with Yahweh. After his article appeared in the Chronicle, San Francisco's archbishop weighed in with an angry letter in support of the rabbi:

I would like to add my “Amen” to the op-ed piece by Rabbi Gil Leeds, “Circumcision ignores our basic religious freedom” (May 20).

The proposed ban on circumcision represents an unconscionable violation of the sanctuaries of faith and family by the government of San Francisco. Although the issue does not concern Christians directly, as a religious leader I can only view with alarm the prospect that this misguided initiative would make it illegal for Jews and Muslims who practice their religion to live in San Francisco—for that is what the passage of such a law would mean.

Apart from the religious aspect, the citizens of San Francisco should be outraged at the prospect of city government dictating to parents in such a sensitive matter regarding the health and hygiene of their children.

George Niederauer, Archbishop of San Francisco

I don't know that you're helping, George. Protecting the health and hygiene of one's children these days would seem to include keeping them away from Catholic churches. May I suggest that you—ahem!—keep your hands off their penises?

I get borking mail

Slouching toward equality

You remember Robert Bork, don't you? Before he turned into a verb, Judge Bork was a member of the bench for the U.S. Court of Appeals. He was also the last nominee to the Supreme Court to have been denied confirmation by a vote of the U.S. Senate (58 nays to 42 ayes). As a result of losing his first choice, President Reagan ended up appointing Anthony Kennedy to the high court. Thus we acquired an unpredictable swing vote in the Supreme Court instead of an absolutely reliable exponent of right-wing jurisprudence. And to everyone's surprise, Kennedy later penned a majority decision in the Lawrence v. Texas decision that struck down sodomy laws. Kennedy also declined to overturn Roe v. Wade, which Bork would happily have done.

Close call.

So whatever happened to old Bob? He dropped any pretense of sweet moderation the moment he was denied the brass ring, began playing the martyr before meetings of conservative political groups, and even favored us with such book-length screeds as Slouching Towards Gomorrah.

And now he's become my pen-pal.

Or, more to the point, Bork has been shilling for the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, which is devoted to making sure that family & human rights don't get extended to people of whom Catholics don't approve. But perhaps it's best if I let Bob tell the story:

Dear Friend,

Let me introduce myself. I am a former federal appeals court judge. Since leaving the bench I have been occupied as an author, teacher, and lecturer in defending our Constitution and the Republic it supports.

Bob considers me his dear friend. I feel all warm and fuzzy.

I write today to warn you of a major threat to our constitutional republic coming at us from the United Nations. There are groups of nations and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) pressing radical social and political policies that would undermine both our sovereignty and our culture. They have had some success.

Oh, oh. Now he has me frightened!

Three years ago, for example, the Supreme Court made homosexual sodomy a constitutional right.

By golly, he's right! The Supreme Court gave gay people the same right to engage in sodomy as straight people used to enjoy exclusively. Did making it legal take some of the thrill out of it?

In 2005 the Court made it unconstitutional to give the death penalty to a killer, no matter how vicious, who was a juvenile at the time he murdered.

Imagine that. We have been denied the right to execute children. No wonder Bob's upset! He has both a bee in his bonnet about the ban on killing juveniles and a burr up his behind about legal sodomy.

Where is he going with this?

Neither of those decisions is justified by the Constitution. But in both cases a majority of the justices used UN documents to justify decisions that undercut our sovereignty and override the democratic decisions of Americans.

Well, tsk tsk say I! Tsk tsk! Imagine the high court taking seriously the notion of “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” in drafting its decisions. I am frankly shocked. Surely there can be no precedent for such an evil doctrine.

The good news is that there is a group at the UN working full time to expose and stop radical UN policies and thus help preserve our Constitution and Republic.

Is it the Justice League of America?

The group is the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) headed by my friend Austin Ruse. I strongly endorse their effort and urge you to support it.

So ... not the Justice League of America?

C-FAM was founded in 1997 precisely to stop UN radicals from foisting anti-life and anti-family policies on the United States. They have had many victories and no other organization is doing their work.

The UN has “anti-family policies”? You mean that UNICEF business is just a front?

Much of the radical UN agenda is aimed directly at Christianity and particularly at the teachings of our Catholic faith.

Now this is scarier than ever. What could the UN possibly be up to that would be more damaging to Catholicism than the activities of its priests and bishops? Surely something pretty damned heinous!

Please help Austin and his faithful team with the most generous gift you can give today.

Yours truly,

Robert H. Bork

---

Damn. Bob isn't going to tell me. He's grubbing for money for his buddy Austin. (And here I thought that I was his “Dear Friend.”)

Fortunately, Austin sent me a letter in the same packet. Maybe Austin will tell me some details about this UN threat to our society.

Yikes! It's six pages long! Austin is a loquacious fellow, isn't he? Let's see if he cuts to the chase somewhere. (I grow weary, since it's difficult to sustain a state of righteous terror and indignation for more than a couple of minutes. Bork and Austin have clearly had a lot more practice than I have.) Let's see. Austin says,

Right now, so-called homosexual-rights groups are demanding the United Nations advance their radical agenda.

“So-called”? I think they actually tend to call themselves “gay” rights groups, but perhaps Austin has researched this more carefully than most people.

And the actual agenda? At last Austin spills the beans:

• Homosexual marriage
• Homosexual adoption
• Repeal of laws against sodomy

Wow! I support all those goals. I guess I'm on the other side. Sorry, Bob! Sorry, Austin! (No contribution for you.)

Maybe I'll send some money to GLSEN instead.

On watching The Golden Compass

Twice so far

Although last weekend was officially dedicated to the debut of Will Smith's I Am Legend: A Zombie Christmas, I chose instead to take in a second viewing of The Golden Compass. While it's fun to poke a finger in the eye of Bill Donohue and his boycott of the movie, I had some purer motives as well. Despite a mixed bag of reviews, I found it extremely enjoyable and simply wanted to see it again.

Many of the less enthusiastic reviewers found the movie disjointed and confusing. Was it really necessary to have read Philip Pullman's book first? If so, then the movie does not stand on its own and fails as an independent cinematic experience. I had read the books of His Dark Materials and thought everything in the movie fell into place rather well. On seeing it a second time, I made a point of watching more critically, and I think I have a clue why some people find it bewildering.

Although The Golden Compass is carefully crafted to hang together, it's the kind of movie that requires us to pay a little attention. Perhaps more than people are wont to give these days. The viewers most likely to fall into confusion are those who neither read the book nor gave the movie their full attention. Things move quickly most of the time. If a movie is mostly an opportunity to munch popcorn and gossip with friends, then it helps to choose a movie whose entertainment value is spectacle driven and not plot dependent. While it has its spectacular episodes, The Golden Compass is not a popcorn-chewing movie.

The opening narration jump-starts the movie by making it clear we're on an alternate Earth where people's souls exist outside their bodies in the form of animal companions called daemons. While playing at war with her companions, Lyra scornfully cites touching another's daemon with bare hands as an uncouth violation, at which all the children recoil in horror. Soon thereafter, while rooting about in the retiring room, Pantalaimon reminds Lyra that he fears she'll be caught and smacked, in which case he'll also feel the pain. No one has any cause to be confused or surprised when Lyra passes out during the scene in Bolvanger as the Gobblers seize her daemon, or when Mrs. Coulter wrings her hand in pain in the earlier scene where Lyra slams a window down on the hand of Coulter's monkey daemon.

The major threads of Lyra's world are reinforced in unforced repetition. Other items, interesting but not key to the plot, are passed over without comment. The power supplies that drive Mrs. Coulter's dirigible and Mr. Scoresby's aerostat are rendered in effective CGI, but no one comments on them. They don't drive the narrative and no time is spent discussing them. In fact, there are relatively few lectures in The Golden Compass, despite several opportunities for characters to prate at each other for our benefit about things that all the characters already know. Even Lord Asriel's discourse on dust at Jordan College is mercifully terse, and Mrs. Coulter's explanation to Lyra of the Magisterium's function is wonderfully straightforward in its saccharine simplicity (“they tell people what to do”).


Nicole Kidman is the ideal Marisa Coulter. Sleek and icy in her portrayal of Pullman's archvillainess, Kidman lets slip Coulter's thin veneer of sprightly affability whenever the target of Coulter's regard needs to see the dangerous steel that lurks just below the surface. No wonder Pullman begged her to take the role.

I've seen it said that the movie's plot is threadbare, but what is wrong with the theme of resistance against a despotic authority? This is a most timely message. In the character of Mrs. Coulter we also get to see the hypocrisy and internal inconsistency of authoritarian regimes: obedience of the rules and conformity to the standards are for others, not for those in charge. Mrs. Coulter is as impulsive and willful as she wants others not to be.

The world depicted in The Golden Compass has heft and solidity. It projects an alternate reality. Is it Pullman's reality? Many aficionados of the novels are dismayed that the cinematic incarnation of the first book has been toned down—even perhaps, bereft of its soul by a kind of literary intercision. The churchly aspects of the Magisterium are played down, making the movie less anticlerical than the books. Only one of the children victimized by the Gobblers is depicted after his intercision, and even in that case his friends and family insist they will find a way to restore him (although in the books such children pine away hopelessly and we see one die).

These things don't really matter. If Philip Pullman can endure them, so can I. The Golden Compass is a treat and worthy of one's attention, but only one's attention can make it the experience it should be.

Pompous circumstance

The false security of the Bush police state

Are we still a free society? Six years of Bush vermin nibbling at our liberties makes us less so all the time. Nina Bernstein of the New York Times returns to a story that is over a year old. The failure to resolve this patently egregious miscarriage of justice is distressingly ample evidence that the police-state tendencies of the Bush administration are poisoning every aspect of life in our nation.

The plight of Nalini Ghuman exhibits all the hallmarks of our federal government under President Bush: incompetence, paranoia, high-handedness, and stubbornness. Ghuman is an assistant professor of music at Mills College in Oakland, California. As a British subject, she works (or used to work) in the United States under an H-1B visa. In August of 2006, when Ghuman returned to the U.S. from a research trip to her native Britain, armed immigration officials in San Francisco took her into custody at the international airport and subjected her to a bizarre ordeal.

In a written account of the next eight hours that she prepared for her lawyer, Ms. Ghuman said that officers tore up her H-1B visa, which was valid through May 2008, defaced her British passport, and seemed suspicious of everything from her music cassettes to the fact that she had listed Welsh as a language she speaks. A redacted government report about the episode obtained by her lawyer under the Freedom of Information Act erroneously described her as “Hispanic.”

Held incommunicado in a room in the airport, she was groped during a body search, she said, and was warned that if she moved, she would be considered to be attacking her armed female searcher. After questioning her for hours, the officers told her that she had been ruled inadmissible, she said, and threatened to transfer her to a detention center in Santa Clara, Calif., unless she left on a flight to London that night.

---

Ghuman chose to leave the country rather than risk open-ended incarceration in the Santa Clara facility. She asked to speak to the British consul, but she was told she had no right to do so—in fact, she had no rights at all.

How long did it take the gun-toting thugs of the U.S. government to realize they had made a mistake? We don't know. In fairness, it could have been a long time. It appears to be disloyal—or even un-American—for federal workers to use their brains these days, lest they appear to think themselves better than the president. Nevertheless, it hardly matters. Professor Ghuman was deemed a security risk and the absence of any evidence to that effect is immaterial.

The State Department has not cooperated with numerous inquiries from Ghuman's colleagues and members of the American Musicological Society (a well-known terrorist front). Members of the British parliament have received similar short shrift and even U.S. Senator Dick Durbin has been able to get a straight answer from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice or anyone else in the Bush administration. The feds have dragged their feet for more than a year now, effectively thumbing their noses at Ghuman, her family, her associates, and her students at Mills College (or, rather, those who would have been her students), as well as American citizens in general and their elected representatives.


Professor Ghuman is a respected scholar in her field, known particularly for her knowledge of the work of British composer Edward Elgar. We all know Elgar, whose Pomp and Circumstance march has been reduced to a boring tradition at graduation ceremonies. Many of us will hear it again at the end of the academic year in June of 2008. Don't be surprised if Nalini Ghuman's situation remains unresolved at that time. Although the Bush administration is the epitome of gross incompetence, one thing it knows how to do is run out the clock.

Doctor Big Brother

He works for the Kaiser

Are you familiar with the Kaiser? Kaiser Permanente is a huge health maintenance organization that serves California and several other states. Most of my colleagues in education have Kaiser as their health plan, especially since employees experience more out-of-pocket expense with other plans. Kaiser costs less because it controls more: You see Kaiser doctors at Kaiser facilities. While it's possible at some point to get a referral that takes you outside the Kaiser system, that is not standard operating procedure.

Clients of Kaiser sometimes grouse about the limitations of the system, but most people seem content with the trade-off of personal choice in favor of cost control. That is, after all, one of the guiding principles of HMOs.

Kaiser Permanente works hard to keep its name before the public and to encourage people to opt for its services when selecting the provider of their employee health benefits. Currently Kaiser is running a series of television advertisements that use “Thrive” as a linking motto. The Thrive campaign is nothing exceptional, featuring the usual healthy, well-scrubbed people who show no signs of needing any special medical attention. We all understand that we're supposed to link the images of healthy-looking people with enrollment in Kaiser. I get it.

What I don't get is why Kaiser thinks its “Entourage” ad will give people warm feelings toward the company. This recently revived spot (originally created in 2004) shows how Kaiser personnel will follow you around all day, intervening in your personal choices and taking control of your life. Isn't that what all of us want? A cardiologist and an internist check a guy's blood pressure and take his vitals while he's trying to participate in a business meeting. A dietitian sneaks up during lunch and swaps the person's chicken dinner for a salad. An optometrist hovers over that person while he puts on his glasses. During the commute home, a physical therapist in the back seat mauls the guy's shoulders while he tries to drive. Then, when the fellow gets home and greets his wife, the entire entourage follows the couple upstairs and a smiling pediatrician waits outside their bedroom door as they presumably work on conceiving a child. Isn't that cozy? Doesn't that mirror your fondest dreams?



The commercial notes that “You don't have to be famous to have an entourage.” Given how much we all hope for an entourage of our own, Kaiser has certainly homed in on a vulnerable point. The next time you're making love to your partner, consider how much happier you would be if a grinning Kaiser physician were just on the other side of the door. Bedside manner has taken on a whole new meaning with Kaiser's entourage coverage.

Here's looking at you, kid!

Welcome to the surveillance society

So the government's been spying on us. Is anyone surprised? The president has "authorized" federal agents to spy on American citizens without benefit of warrants or sanction of congressional statute. Is anyone surprised?

Apparently some people are. My senior U.S. senator says it's "astounding." Come on, Dianne. You've had a front-row seat in Washington, D.C., for five years of the most corrupt administration since Richard Nixon's. While Nixon was the chief executive who actually said, "When the president does it, that means it's not illegal," it's George W. Bush who really took it to heart. American citizens have languished in prison for years without even being charged—let alone tried—for crimes real or imagined. Prisoners of "war" (there's been no congressional declaration of war, by the way) have been incarcerated and tortured with complete disregard for the Geneva conventions to which the U.S. is a signatory. Just as federal law apparently doesn't restrict what the administration can do at home, international treaties don't restrict what the administration can do abroad. We have become a form of despotism, under the rule of a man (and his minions or controllers) rather than under the rule of law.

These big issues have come front and center during the controversy over reauthorization of the Patriot Act, which is fortunately stalled for the time being in the U.S. Senate. (Thank you, Russ Feingold!) On the national stage we will see it played out, and patriotic Americans should be contacting their Senators and Representatives to demand a rollback of the act's more pernicious intrusions into personal privacy, especially any provision that allows federal agents to forgo the acquisition of a search warrant. (For those of you who haven't paid any attention to the U.S. Constitution since the Bush administration declared it inoperative, don't forget that the Fourth Amendment specifically says, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." That's the entire amendment. Do you see any clause saying "unless the president disagrees"?)

The Patriot Act is currently under attack by an unlikely coalition of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans who fear the aggregation of unrestricted power by federal authorities to interfere in the private lives of Americans. Given Bush's damaged public standing in the wake of the Iraqi misadventure, indictments of political allies and White House aides, and revelations of paid propaganda efforts both domestic and foreign, it may be the ideal moment to clip his wings. That would set the stage for a three-year lame-duck period until he can be evicted from the White House to make way for a more responsible chief executive (which at this stage would be almost anyone else). We might even hope that the 2006 mid-term elections will cost Bush the complaisant congressional majorities that normally wink at his depredations. That might check—or even force into retreat—the president's reign of error.

In the meantime, we must be eternally vigilant against further abuses of our civil rights. A rollback of the so-called Patriot Act is overdue.

All politics is local

Many people seem to take comfort in the mindless adage "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." By definition, most of us constitute the "faceless masses" of the population and may feel secure in our anonymity. This position is not tenable.

While it is difficult to forecast when the tipping point will occur, we see every day that daily life is increasingly under routine scrutiny. Orwell's 1984 was clearly fiction because there was no way imaginable in which Big Brother really could be watching every individual's private life, but Orwell was writing his dystopian fantasy in the era before the rise of electronic surveillance. All large metropolitan areas and most mid-sized cities are festooned with webcams. You are captured on video every time you go downtown. Or pass through an airport. Or visit an automatic teller machine (which, of course, is also recording your transaction electronically, as indeed it must).

Our privacy is protected only to the extent that it is not yet possible to integrate all of our electronic spoor into individual profiles. We don't need much imagination, however, to visualize how well our financial institutions know us and to grasp how completely our lives could be characterized if our credit card transactions were matched with our appearances on surveillance cams, our library acquisitions, our magazine subscriptions, our website visits, and our political contributions. As an ACLU member who contributed to Clinton, Dean, Kerry, Boxer, and Hackett, I probably already qualify for residence at Guantánamo. Once computer programs learn to parse video and recognize faces, we could all have dossiers as detailed as those J. Edgar Hoover used to collect on the disfavored few. Imagine how helpful those could be to people who want to sell you stuff, discredit you, or harass you.

I don't think we can reasonably expect to reverse the trend toward greater availability of personal information on-line. How artfully could laws be drafted to retard the growth of on-line databases and what enforcement mechanisms would be required to make them effective (and would the medicine be worse than the illness)? Cameras will proliferate. Databases will grow. Network connections will increase. It's too late to put the toothpaste back in the tube. Perhaps prevention would have been nice, but that needed to happen yesterday. And it didn't.

I think we have to take a different tack. We need to be ready to punish the abusers of personal information. It won't be an easy task. Our progress toward the protection of personal privacy has been minimal, hampered by an administration that does not even recognize the notion of personal privacy (after all, the word "privacy" is not in the constitution) and the reluctance of elected officials to interfere with the lucrative information market. Yet it can be done. One small victory is the national "do not call" list, which requires telemarketers to refrain from intruding on the household serenity of those who put their names on the list. That seems like a small thing, perhaps, but it's an example of the kind of legislation that can be enacted when people become aggravated by constant disturbances.

The next steps will require legislators to enact condign penalties for those who use our personal information in ways contrary to our best interests or wishes. Think about the difficulties. There are civil liberty implications. Can we avoid infringing on free-speech rights? (Some claim the do-not-call lists infringe on the free-speech rights of marketing operations, but that argument has not proved to be very robust.) What would constitute improper use of personal information? Definitions must be crafted and balanced against competing interests. Penalties for infringement must be proportionate. We are at the very beginning of the discussion, but we would be well advised to get started now, while the window of opportunity is still open.

A couple of resources

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one of the leading voices in the debate over personal freedom in cyberspace. Its website regularly reports on corporate and governmental abuses and intrusions. The foundation's new blogger rights program is dedicated to ensuring free speech rights for the independent voices that speak up in the on-line world. Keep an eye on the EFF site to stay informed on what's happening out on the electronic frontier.

For people who find the EFF to be insufficiently pure and too willing to compromise, the on-line journal The Register may be more to your taste. Based in the United Kingdom, The Register's banner carries the motto, "Biting the hand that feeds IT." Go visit its website for biting rants and amusing items like "Do webcams break when Tony Blair walks by?" (It appears that they do.)

And wherever you are, don't forget to keep abreast of the positions your local politicians take on privacy issues. If your city council votes for more surveillance cameras, where will they be placed, who will have access to the video, how will the information be used, and what penalties will be imposed on those who violate the rules governing and restricting said information? The genie is out of the bottle, so it's already getting late to be thinking about the rules we want to follow when we wish for a safe and secure society. The price may be higher than you think.