Michael J. Fox Cuts In on the Circumcision Debate
“Whose penis? Whose body? Whose rights?” read one sign. “You Want to Cut Off WHAT?” read another.
These were a couple of the slogans of the approximately 50 demonstrators at 16th annual rally in favor of making male circumcision illegal. Held to commemorate Genital Integrity Awareness Week and the 12th anniversary of Congress’s ban of female genital mutilation, the protesters gathered in front of the White House this week to urge Congress to pass a bill banning circumcision or what they call “male genital mutilation.”
The leaders of the pack, 21-year-olds Jason Siegel and Zachary Levi Balakoff, were on day three of their hunger strike and attribute their convictions to the “the ‘giant monstrosity’ of circumcision that ‘envelops’ their entire lives,” The Washington Post reported.
Brian J. Morris, professor of molecular medical sciences at the University of Sydney thinks the group’s philosophy is inherently flawed. “Only deception by their propaganda leads some gullible men into believing that their sexual problems have something to do with their circumcision as an infant,” he told the Washington Post.
Michael J. Fox recently cut in on the discussion, favoring his son getting the procedure over with as soon as possible. “To me it was very clear [he should be circumcised],” Fox writes in his memoir, “Always Looking Up.” He told his Jewish-born wife, Tracy Pollan: “If the doctor does it now … I’ll look [Sam] in the eye and give him someone to scream at. But if in 13 years, if he decides he wants to have a bar mitzvah and he isn’t circumcised, then you are going to be in that room with him. I’m going to Vegas.”
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