David De Lossy/Digital Vision/Thinkstock(SAN FRANCISCO) -- Lloyd Schofield is a man on a mission to ban circumcision from his community.



"The foreskin is there for a reason," said Schofield, who is retired from a career in the hotel industry. "It's not a birth defect. It serves an important function in a man's life, and nobody has a right to perform unnecessary surgery on another human being."



And this November, San Francisco voters may have the opportunity to vote on whether they feel the practice -- often associated with religious protocol -- should be banned in the city and county of San Francisco.



He and his fellow organizers have created an initiative known as the "Prohibition of Genital Cutting of Male Minors. The proposal would make it illegal to "circumcise, excise, cut, or mutilate the whole or any part of the foreskin, testicles, or penis of another person who has not attained the age of 18 years."



The group has collected more than 12,000 local signatures to put the proposal on the city ballot in November 2011. They have also collected a fair share of ire from religious groups and medical experts alike.



Doctors, mohels and any other person who performs the procedure would face up to a $1,000 fine or a year of jail time.



Circumcision, where the foreskin of the penis is surgically removed, has been a hot topic for some time. Schofield began researching the procedure several years ago and found a local group of "intactivists," or people who believe that infant boys have the right to keep their foreskin intact.



Circumcision is an important ritual in the Jewish faith, where it is performed on eight-day-old males.



Marc Stern, associate general counsel for legal advocacy with the American Jewish Committee, said the Jewish community is "clearly appalled" by the proposal.



"This is the most direct assault on Jewish religious practice in the United States," said Stern. "It's unprecedented in American Jewish life."



Stern said that the Jewish community has held strategy meetings to diminish the proposal.﻿

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