Meet the Guys Protecting Kids from Genital Mutilation at Los Angeles Pride

It was when Eric Clopper was an undergraduate at Colgate University visiting Scotland with the rugby team that he first saw an intact (i.e. uncircumcised) penis in the locker room. Clopper—who grew up in Boston—was completely unaware of existence of alternative show room models up until then.

Seeing them sparked a personal and intellectual journey for Clopper—that culminated in the 2018 performance of his one-man play, ‘Sex and Circumcision: An American Love Story’ at Harvard. 

Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCuy163srRc, 

In it, Clopper shares both his personal struggle as a Jewish man wrestling with the issue of protecting children from genital mutilation. Whether it was the 7’ inflated penises, the performance with the sex doll, the full-frontal nudity, or the political message, the play garnered widespread attention and thrust Clopper into the forefront of the movement to protect children from genital mutilation. 

Clopper uses his platform to dispel the myth that opposing male genital mutilation is any way anti-Semitic. As a Jew, Clopper believes that it is an important value to protect children from genital mutilation and that it is a “mitzvah to move past the actual violence of the ritual and move towards a more inclusive and peaceful way of welcoming our children into the world.”

Last year, Clopper graduated from Georgetown Law School and is now, along with other sympathetic attorneys and organizations, organizing to address male genital mutilation, much as female genital mutilation was banned in the United States in the 1990s. 

On Sunday, Clopper was at Los Angeles’ Gay Pride representing the newly formed GALDEF: the Genital Autonomy Legal Defense and Education Fund.

GALDEF’s Board is comprised of lifetime intactivists: those who are committed to protect children from genital mutilation while remaining consistent with the Constitution. GALDEF’s mission is to promote impact litigation to close the gender gap in America’s genital mutilation laws, which already protect female children from genital mutilation but not intersex and male babies.

Hyperlink: http://www.galdef.org/

Eric Clopper on the steps of congress

How did you end up teaming up with GALDEF?

CLOPPER: I have known GALDEF’s founder Tim Hammond for years. Tim was the first person to publish two large scale circumcision surveys  that have helped demonstrate the harm that men suffer from the removal of 40% of the skin on their penis —which is what circumcision is—this may seem obvious when you say it like that. But Tim actually did the work documenting thousands of first-hand accounts from men expressing the trauma they have endured because of the practice. 

GALDEF builds on the efforts of organizations like Attorney’s for the Rights of the Child, whose founder J. Steven Svoboda argued in front of the United Nations that every infant has the right to bodily integrity and that removing healthy tissue from an infant is only permissible if there is an immediate medical condition threatening his life.

Where GALDEF differs is that they are committed to pursuing impact litigation—beyond activism and education—to spur legislative action to protect all children from genital mutilation, irrespective of gender. 

Have there been suits filed by adult men for being circumcised?

CLOPPER: Yes, but lawsuits regarding circumcision are very narrowly focused on individual harms, not systemic harms. In fact, most of the current suits revolve around botched circumcision—children losing more of their penis than intended resulting in devastating complications ranging from massive blood loss, sepsis, seizures, and even death.

These “botched” surgery cases involving “botched” surgeries are essentially medical malpractice and personal injury lawsuits. Other lawsuits have involved issues regarding lack of informed consent or capacity. But like the botch cases, they primarily seek monetary damages, not changes in the law to protect the children.

Instead, GALDEF’s focus is expanding the 1996 federal and similar state statutes banning female genital mutilation so that all children receive equal protection under the law.

In terms of public opinion—do you feel that we’ve reached critical mass in terms of making opposition to circumcision a less contentious issue and lead to actual change?

CLOPPER: Yes and no. If you ask the question – are you against male genital mutilation? Most people will say, “Of course! I am against mutilation.” If you ask the question –  are you against circumcision? Most people want to change the subject. Language and tradition matter. There is a growing realization among my generation that circumcision is male genital mutilation and not simply a matter of tradition. 

I believe America is ready for the discussion which for too long has been obscured by circumcision proponents using blanket accusations of Anti-Semioticist as a shield to stop all thoughtful discussion.

Look, when I was in in law school at Georgetown, I was known as the guy who was opposed to general mutilation. And I had widespread support among my colleagues and my professors—which gave me hope that things will change since that group encompasses a few thousand future jurists who will be prominent legal voices in the coming decades. 

This issue remains contentious in the United States for a myriad of reasons—primarily America’s general discomfort discussing sex or the genitals. This is a historically longstanding problem—compounded by the fact that by the time you reach an age where you’re having the discussion, there’s not much you can do to repair the damage. It also raises the uncomfortable issues of who to blame, if anyone. 

As the late historian Robert Darby said: the “origins of routine circumcision lie in the extraordinary mental gymnastics by which normal male sexuality . . . was considered a life-threatening disease.”

As of 2023, there is no authoritative medical body which continues to promote the circumcision. In fact, all secular European medical bodies advise against neonatal circumcision, accurately calling it a harmful procedure that violates the boy’s right to make this important decision until he is old enough to understand what is at stake. (And in reality, over 99% of men who are born intact remain intact because they enjoy the function and feeling their foreskin provides.)

At the end of the day, I believe we’ve reached a tipping point regarding the practice and GALDEF is positioned to spearhead and present a compelling counter narrative.

What is the current secular medical justification for the practice?

CLOPPER: The short answer is none. 

In America, it’s so common in this country, doctors often defer to parents, which is wholly inappropriate. Doctors have a fiduciary duty to exercise their independent medical judgment for what is in the best interest of the patient, which in this case is the newborn infant. In other words, the newborn’s parents are not the patient, and doctors should not be performing medically unnecessary surgeries on infants because their parents want them to. 

But like I said, there are many overlapping reasons—many doctors themselves were circumcised and raised to believe or taught in medical school to perform it. 

The medical justification for circumcision used to be that it inhibits masturbation—obviously not true. Then the medical justification was it prevented gonorrhea and syphilis. Those justifications have gone by the wayside, and a minority of doctors now argue it is “cleaner” or has some marginal protection against HIV .

But, just like the anti-masturbation argument, the modern arguments defending male genital mutilation do not hold up under scrutiny. Instead, the widespread ignorance about the harms of genital cutting largely stem from the society’s general discomfort of talking about the subject matter at all. 

How deeply embedded in American culture in circumcision?

CLOPPER:  I remember back in 2015 when I was living in Madison, Wisconsin, I went to the UW Madison Medical Library and I pulled the historical urology textbooks and I noted, that from the seventies to maybe like 2000 roughly, that all the penises didn’t have a foreskin or it was drawn in such a way to minimize its size and importance. That’s like a medical textbook omitting the fingers from a hand, or more like omitting the clitoris from the vulva.

Whereas in reality, the male foreskin grows in adulthood to be about the size of your palm. (Mine would be bigger.) But in past textbooks, the foreskin was either completely omitted or it was drawn as a tiny little structure in an attempt to trivialize its importance. Whereas the foreskin is actually a massive organ that is integral for normal sexual functioning and enjoyment for adult men.

PRIDE photo (from left to right): Brad Kane, owner of Kane Law Firm, Tim Hammond (president of GALDEF), Justine Block, Attorney, Eric Clopper, Attorney at Kane Law Firm, and Eliyahu Ungar Sargon

So why did GALDEF choose gay pride in Los Angeles to announce themselves?

CLOPPER: Well, many aspects of the LGBT movement center around bodily autonomy, sexual autonomy, and personal freedom. Gay rights largely stem from the growing realization that adults should be free to govern themselves and express themselves in a way that does not harm others: think the values protected by the First Amendment. The movement to protect all children from genital mutilation encompasses that same ethos. 

You know: love is love, and the notion that people have the right to their own bodies and to do what they want with other consenting adults is at the heart of the LGBT movement. That’s an eminently reasonable position, and it is shared by those of us who also want to protect children’s rights to be free from genital mutilation. 

It’s because of the shared values between the LGBQT community and intactivists that it made sense to premiere GALDEF’s initiatives at L A Pride.