StupidiSnip

(CNN) -- A San Francisco-based advocacy group known as Male Genital Mutilation Bill has collected enough signatures on its petition to ban circumcision that the proposal will appear on the city's November electoral ballot.

This petition will make circumcision a misdemeanor if performed on boys under age 18, punishable by a fine of $1,000 and up to a year in jail. A similar effort is under way in Santa Monica, supported by the San Diego-based MGM, which has prepared anti-circumcision legislation in 46 states.

Some say you must draw the line on parents' rights to make decisions for their children at "bodily mutilation." If that is the case, then they should consider another very common and usually harmless procedure, often performed on infant females: ear-piercing. About 20% of baby girls suffer minor complications from ear piercing; about 3% suffer major ones. Complications include swelling, drainage, infection, bleeding, cyst formation, large scars and trauma. Surely such piercing should be banned before anyone bans circumcision.

Okay, a few things here.  First, circumcision has some clear medical  benefits, including reducing transmission of STDs and UTIs during infancy that can affect kidneys in adulthood.  Ear piercing may be steeped in tradition but offers no practical advantage to babies.

I'm not saying either practice should be required or outlawed.  It makes sense to me that these decisions should be left to the parents to decide, based on their beliefs and choices.  Making this illegal is just an attempt for a small group of people to warp the law to support their beliefs.  That is the crime here, not a surgery performed on a child who will have no memory of the procedure.

That's how I'm calling it, anyway.  As always, I am interested in what you folks think.