Push for MGM Bill outlawing male circumcision hits Monday.

Michael and some of my other friendly rivals at Jewlicious have complained that I haven’t clarified my reservations about circumcision, and would like to know more about where I stand on the issue.

Very well, Michael, but that’s a big subject to tackle, and it’s a subject I don’t really feel comfortable talking about usually, but as there will be an official push on Monday for a sponsor of the MGM Bill, I guess I can break from my usual silence on the matter.

The MGM (male genital mutilation) bill seeks to outlaw male circumcision in this country except in very exceptional circumstances, and religious ritual does not qualify as an exceptional circumstance under this bill.

MGMbill.org is a non-profit organization based in San Diego, California, seeking to pass a law that will end the practice of male genital mutilation (circumcision) in the United States of America. Currently, girls are protected from genital mutilation by U.S. federal law, but boys are not.

Although legal protection of only girls from circumcision would seem to violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the fact remains that it is still widely considered to be legal in this country to mutilate a boy’s genitals in the name of social custom, hygiene, religion, or any other reason. This is true despite the well documented lifelong damage that male circumcision causes each of its victims.

Now you might as why this is strange. After all, didn’t the FGM bill also ban FGM 1, the least radical of all forms of FGM, and a close parallel to male circumcision, and didn’t Jews, especially Jewish women, support this bill enthusiastically, and weren’t they some of the biggest and loudest (yes, it’s hard to believe) supporters of that bill? What’s the difference, you ask?

The difference is that Muslims practice female circumcision, and Jews are more progressive than our Muslim cousins. And frequently whiter in many ways too. At least compared to the Muslim arabs who dominate the religion. So we deserve religious license and sensitivity, and Muslims don’t. Additionally, if someone attempts to parallel FGM and male circumcision, we can simply contrast male circumcision to infibulation or clitoridectomy, instead of the actual parallel, Type I FGM, that is to say, female circumcision. Aren’t we clever?

But surprisingly, not everyone sees the difference. But hey, even if they ban circumcision, we can just go to a Middle Eastern country for the weekend, right?

Well, not if this bill is ever passed in its entirety. They do seek to stop circumcision trips. Good thing profiling is strongly discouraged in this country!

But don’t worry. The MGM bill won’t pass. At least not this year. In fact, no one has even agreed to even to bring it to the floor. Yet.

But it will eventually come to the floor. And it won’t pass, and people will laugh at the sponsor, but things will be different after that. And many will start asking who is blocking the bill and why. For who are we to insist that our religious needs should be placed ahead of a child’s rights, when we were so quick and eager to deny that same religious right to others who had a parallel ritual for their girls?

Maybe we should have fought against making Type I FGM illegal. Or maybe we should have just shut the fuck up.

And difficult as the former position seems–as it runs counter to our need to demonstrate how progressive we are and how pro-woman we are and it would have put us in the situation of helping the Muslims instead of sticking it to them–it still would have been less contrary to our nature than the latter.