After long being the target of ridicule — giggles, eye rolls and snippy jokes — the anti-circumcision movement is starting to make political inroads, thanks to one man, virtually unknown until now, who has transformed the movement with an influx of cash.
Dean Pisani, 44, America’s biggest donor to pro-foreskin forces, has given at least $1.3 million to the so-called “intact-ivist” cause, mostly through the group he helped found, Intact America. Before Pisani, the largest anti-circumcision groups raked in less than $20,000 a year.
Texas-based Pisani — who owns an environmental services firm called Entact — may be the most important anti-circumcision supporter that nobody’s ever heard of.
“I didn’t even know the name. I just know he’s the one who really got it going,” said Lloyd Schofield, the San Francisco activist who collected more than 12,000 signatures to put the proposed circumcision ban on the city ballot.
“Everybody in the ‘intact-ivist’ movement is exceptionally grateful for his generous donation, and we’re looking for a lot more people like him,” Schofield said.
The uncut cause already has historical momentum on its side: A study released last year showed 33 percent of newborn boys in the United States were snipped in 2009, compared with 56 percent in 2006, according to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention. That’s down from a 64 percent circumcision rate in 1979.
In November, San Francisco will be the first city to ask voters whether they want to ban circumcising boys under 18. A similar initiative was proposed in Santa Monica, Calif., for 2012. And activists in 45 other states are pushing for circumcision bans. Just last week, in order to save money, Colorado became the 17th cash- strapped state in just over a decade to stop Medicare funding for medically unnecessary circumcisions.
And the anti-circumcision marketing video that recently went viral, “Intact & Famous: Celebrities with Foreskins,” asks if there was anything wrong with Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Colin Farrell and other uncircumcised celebrities.
In an exclusive interview with The Daily, Pisani described himself as “private” and a “a normal dude” who was happy to remain behind-the-scenes.
“You can Google my name, but you won’t find much about me,” Pisani said. “I just write the checks.”
And no, Pisani is not “intact” — he was circumcised as a baby.
“I was born in the ’60s — it was just done like brushing your teeth or something,” said Pisani, who got involved in the effort in 1999 after his wife became pregnant. At first he had no opinion on whether to circumcise his son. Then, after researching, he decided the procedure was unnecessary.
When a nurse ridiculed Pisani for not circumcising his boy, “she lit my fire,” he said.
He called a longtime anti-circumcision activist in San Francisco, Marilyn Milos, to ask what he could do to help. First, he gave her group, National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers, or NOCIRC, donations of between $5,000 to $20,000 a year.
Then in 2006, Pisani met a like-minded attorney, Georganne Chapin, who runs Hudson Health Plan, a nonprofit group in New York. Together in 2008, Pisani and Chapin, 59, founded Intact America.
Both believe that Americans are behind the rest of the world, which largely doesn’t circumcise. Pisani, Chapin and others also say it’s wrong that U.S. laws protect female genitalia from cutting, but not boys.
Over the past decade, Facebook has helped organize anti-circumcision activists, and YouTube has inspired new ones by making grotesquely detailed circumcision videos widely available, said Matthew Hess, an activist who wrote the San Francisco initiative.
Then came Pisani’s cash infusions, Hess said.
“For years, ‘intact-ivism’ moved at a glacial pace,” Hess said. “Only in the past two to three years, it’s really picked up steam."
Before Pisani came along, activists had been relying on PayPal donations of anywhere from a couple of dollars to a few thousand.
Milos, the mother hen of the national anti-circumcision movement, said she was stunned when she heard about Pisani’s $1 million donation in 2008.
“I cried for 15 minutes,” the former midwife told The Daily as she snipped roses in her garden. She’s spent three decades helping the movement grow from her northern California home.
Pisani’s donations have allowed Intact America to spend money on pressuring influential organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics through petitions and ad campaigns.
Maybe the lobbying has helped.
In 2009, the CDC said it was working on a recommendation regarding circumcision but currently has “no position” on the procedure.
Meanwhile, anti-circumcision lobbying efforts are convincing some Americans, but the pro-foreskin crowd is irritating others.
Last week, a group of Jewish, Muslim and other groups filed a lawsuit against the San Francisco initiative, claiming that only the state can legislate that type of law. Besides, they said, circumcision is a religious ritual protected under the Constitution, and cutting away the foreskin has proven health benefits.
“This would make doctors criminal for doing something that has a health benefit,” said Abby Porth, associate director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco. “It’s ludicrous.”
According to the World Health Organization, circumcision helps reduce HIV by 60 percent in parts of Africa, but it hasn’t kept statistics for Western countries. It also says the procedure helps ward off penile cancer, male urinary tract infections and other conditions.
But the organization and many American medical groups stop short of telling parents whether cut or uncut is healthier.
Dr. Edgar Schoen, clinical professor of pediatrics at University of California, San Francisco, and former chief of the circumcision commission at the American Academy of Pediatrics, is a pro-circumcision physician who said the procedure helps protect against urinary tract infections and kidney disease, as well as sexually transmitted diseases.
“The scientific evidence is overwhelming, and getting more and more so. You come up with about a 10-to-1 benefit to risk ratio,” he told The Daily.
“All kinds of germs, viruses and bacteria have a favorable environment under the foreskin, it’s warm and it’s moist,” said Schoen, who noted that circumcision is as American as “apple pie and the stars and stripes.”
Porth blasted the San Francisco initiative as “hate-motivated,” after it came out that Hess, a leader in the San Francisco initiative — which would slap a $1,000 fine and a year of jail time on anyone who circumcises a male under 18 — published a comic on his website that many consider anti-Semitic.
The comic, “Foreskin Man,” depicts an evil rabbi wielding a knife over a baby lying on a pool table. In his defense, Hess said the Jewish parents are depicted as innocent and that he dislikes anyone who snips a baby’s foreskin.
Such tactics seem at odds with Pisani, a churchgoing Republican who said he does not proselytize about the issue to friends, family or employees.
As for Pisani’s commitment to the cause, he said his wife, a nurse, is on board. The couple also donates large sums to charities that fight child abuse, he said.
Only half-joking, he said he’ll continue writing checks unless anything changes in the science surrounding circumcision.
“If someone came to me and said it saves lives, my money would start going the other direction,” Pisani said.
Dean Pisani, 44, America’s biggest donor to pro-foreskin forces, has given at least $1.3 million to the so-called “intact-ivist” cause, mostly through the group he helped found, Intact America. Before Pisani, the largest anti-circumcision groups raked in less than $20,000 a year.
Texas-based Pisani — who owns an environmental services firm called Entact — may be the most important anti-circumcision supporter that nobody’s ever heard of.
“I didn’t even know the name. I just know he’s the one who really got it going,” said Lloyd Schofield, the San Francisco activist who collected more than 12,000 signatures to put the proposed circumcision ban on the city ballot.
“Everybody in the ‘intact-ivist’ movement is exceptionally grateful for his generous donation, and we’re looking for a lot more people like him,” Schofield said.
The uncut cause already has historical momentum on its side: A study released last year showed 33 percent of newborn boys in the United States were snipped in 2009, compared with 56 percent in 2006, according to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention. That’s down from a 64 percent circumcision rate in 1979.
In November, San Francisco will be the first city to ask voters whether they want to ban circumcising boys under 18. A similar initiative was proposed in Santa Monica, Calif., for 2012. And activists in 45 other states are pushing for circumcision bans. Just last week, in order to save money, Colorado became the 17th cash- strapped state in just over a decade to stop Medicare funding for medically unnecessary circumcisions.
And the anti-circumcision marketing video that recently went viral, “Intact & Famous: Celebrities with Foreskins,” asks if there was anything wrong with Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Colin Farrell and other uncircumcised celebrities.
In an exclusive interview with The Daily, Pisani described himself as “private” and a “a normal dude” who was happy to remain behind-the-scenes.
“You can Google my name, but you won’t find much about me,” Pisani said. “I just write the checks.”
And no, Pisani is not “intact” — he was circumcised as a baby.
“I was born in the ’60s — it was just done like brushing your teeth or something,” said Pisani, who got involved in the effort in 1999 after his wife became pregnant. At first he had no opinion on whether to circumcise his son. Then, after researching, he decided the procedure was unnecessary.
When a nurse ridiculed Pisani for not circumcising his boy, “she lit my fire,” he said.
He called a longtime anti-circumcision activist in San Francisco, Marilyn Milos, to ask what he could do to help. First, he gave her group, National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers, or NOCIRC, donations of between $5,000 to $20,000 a year.
Then in 2006, Pisani met a like-minded attorney, Georganne Chapin, who runs Hudson Health Plan, a nonprofit group in New York. Together in 2008, Pisani and Chapin, 59, founded Intact America.
Both believe that Americans are behind the rest of the world, which largely doesn’t circumcise. Pisani, Chapin and others also say it’s wrong that U.S. laws protect female genitalia from cutting, but not boys.
Over the past decade, Facebook has helped organize anti-circumcision activists, and YouTube has inspired new ones by making grotesquely detailed circumcision videos widely available, said Matthew Hess, an activist who wrote the San Francisco initiative.
Then came Pisani’s cash infusions, Hess said.
“For years, ‘intact-ivism’ moved at a glacial pace,” Hess said. “Only in the past two to three years, it’s really picked up steam."
Before Pisani came along, activists had been relying on PayPal donations of anywhere from a couple of dollars to a few thousand.
Milos, the mother hen of the national anti-circumcision movement, said she was stunned when she heard about Pisani’s $1 million donation in 2008.
“I cried for 15 minutes,” the former midwife told The Daily as she snipped roses in her garden. She’s spent three decades helping the movement grow from her northern California home.
Pisani’s donations have allowed Intact America to spend money on pressuring influential organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics through petitions and ad campaigns.
Maybe the lobbying has helped.
In 2009, the CDC said it was working on a recommendation regarding circumcision but currently has “no position” on the procedure.
Meanwhile, anti-circumcision lobbying efforts are convincing some Americans, but the pro-foreskin crowd is irritating others.
Last week, a group of Jewish, Muslim and other groups filed a lawsuit against the San Francisco initiative, claiming that only the state can legislate that type of law. Besides, they said, circumcision is a religious ritual protected under the Constitution, and cutting away the foreskin has proven health benefits.
“This would make doctors criminal for doing something that has a health benefit,” said Abby Porth, associate director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco. “It’s ludicrous.”
According to the World Health Organization, circumcision helps reduce HIV by 60 percent in parts of Africa, but it hasn’t kept statistics for Western countries. It also says the procedure helps ward off penile cancer, male urinary tract infections and other conditions.
But the organization and many American medical groups stop short of telling parents whether cut or uncut is healthier.
Dr. Edgar Schoen, clinical professor of pediatrics at University of California, San Francisco, and former chief of the circumcision commission at the American Academy of Pediatrics, is a pro-circumcision physician who said the procedure helps protect against urinary tract infections and kidney disease, as well as sexually transmitted diseases.
“The scientific evidence is overwhelming, and getting more and more so. You come up with about a 10-to-1 benefit to risk ratio,” he told The Daily.
“All kinds of germs, viruses and bacteria have a favorable environment under the foreskin, it’s warm and it’s moist,” said Schoen, who noted that circumcision is as American as “apple pie and the stars and stripes.”
Porth blasted the San Francisco initiative as “hate-motivated,” after it came out that Hess, a leader in the San Francisco initiative — which would slap a $1,000 fine and a year of jail time on anyone who circumcises a male under 18 — published a comic on his website that many consider anti-Semitic.
The comic, “Foreskin Man,” depicts an evil rabbi wielding a knife over a baby lying on a pool table. In his defense, Hess said the Jewish parents are depicted as innocent and that he dislikes anyone who snips a baby’s foreskin.
Such tactics seem at odds with Pisani, a churchgoing Republican who said he does not proselytize about the issue to friends, family or employees.
As for Pisani’s commitment to the cause, he said his wife, a nurse, is on board. The couple also donates large sums to charities that fight child abuse, he said.
Only half-joking, he said he’ll continue writing checks unless anything changes in the science surrounding circumcision.
“If someone came to me and said it saves lives, my money would start going the other direction,” Pisani said.
