13 men were in attendance at this month's NORM Southern California meeting.
Shortly after last month's meeting, a new webmaster started updating our site. New information and links were added, as well as a slightly different design (for all the techies out there - we are now HTML 4.01 compliant). During the meeting, he read some statistics he'd been keeping. So far this month, in less than 3 weeks, the site has had over 1100 hits, and has been visited by a long list of countries where circumcision is either common or uncommon. [Note: the site eventually reached over 2000 hits for the month of March. We unfortunately lost the list of countries, but it did take at about a minute to read.]
The group discussed a court case involving circumcision that's made news recently. There has been an ongoing legal dispute between a divorced couple in Oregon over whether their 12 year old son should be circumcised after the father's conversion to Judaism. The mother is opposed to it, and has appealed court decisions in favor of letting the father do this. Two months ago the Oregon Supreme Court remanded the case to a trial court, insisting that the boy's agreement or disagreement on the matter be considered. More information can be found from Doctors Opposing Circumcision, who last year filed two amicus curae briefings in support of the mother's case.
Next our discussion turned to devices. Ron Low, a man long active in the restoration movement, has made a donation to our group of his TLC Tugger and TLC-X restoration devices. The TLC is a tapeless tugger designed to be used with an elastic strap to pull the skin forward. In function it is similar to the Tug Ahoy, designed by past NORM-SoCal regular Jim Hoy. Both use silicone shells to grip the foreskin, with a difference in that the TLC shells have more of a conical shape. The outer shell of the TLC is also designed to be used as a retainer to hold the skin forward when not tugging. Ron's new TLC-X is a variation in which Ron has added an inner rod to provide tension without the use of a strap.
Tom, also long active in the restoration movement, and manufacturer of the CAT II, has donated one of his devices to our group. This one also uses an inner rod for tension, and is designed to be used without any straps or weights. Its parts are made of plastic, similar to the DTR device seen at recent meetings. Tom is offering $10.00 off for a limited time. [A complete list of devices and links to the manufacturers' sites can be found at http://www.norm.org/devices.html].
A big thanks to both Ron and Tom for donating their products to our library!