As If Circumcision Wasn’t Already Bad Enough

Hizzoner is in hot water with the ultraorthodox sect that gives babies life-threatening genital herpes after the City Health Department’s recent public information campaign warning parents about the dangers of allowing a mohel to suck the blood from a baby’s freshly circumcised penis. The Times has the latest:

Some in the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities say the city is infringing upon their religious rights. They go so far as to accuse Mr. Bloomberg of reneging on what they say they took as an election-year assurance that the administration would leave the matter to rabbinical authorities. But others outside those communities had been harshly critical of the administration, saying that it failed to take adequate action against a practice that has been endangering the lives of infants.

The dispute, which had the mayor trying to calm rabbinical leaders at Gracie Mansion yesterday in what his aides called a frank exchange, has put Mr. Bloomberg in the rare position of balancing a key constituency against the policies of one of his most trusted commissioners. And it occurs against the backdrop of the roiling ethnic politics of New York, with Orthodox leaders having threatened to disrupt the mayor’s inauguration last Sunday by wearing yellow stars like the ones Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany. [Emph. added]

If there’s one thing I know, it’s that the City Health Department warning parents about geezers who give infants life-threatening genital herpes is so not like Nazi Germany. (And fuck you for the equivalence, you baby dick sucking apologists.) (Was that last part out loud? Sorry.)

Anyway, as Health and Mental Hygiene Commissioner Dr. Thomas R. Frieden notes, “There’s no question this is one of the most delicate issues I’ve ever had to deal with.” An understatement.

As for the ultraorthodox community being upset because they feel they got assurances from Bloomberg that he wouldn’t “infringe” on their “religious right” to practice this kind of circumcision, talk about single-issue voting — they make the pro-life platform seem like de Tocqueville:

An editorial last week in a local Yiddish newspaper, Der Blatt, cited the mayor’s position then as a catalyst for the huge campaign rally for him on Nov. 5 in Williamsburg.

“What has been promised to us prior to the recent elections — and this was the only request we made — was that the subject of metzitzah b’peh should be completely untouched by the city department of health,” the editorial said. “This and only this was the reason why thousands of Orthodox Jews registered themselves to vote, undersigned a petition to the mayor, came out in droves, men, women and children, to an unprecedented rally.”

God help us.