Trump vs. circumcision protesters: What’s the difference?

Frank Cerabino

We switched from antiTrump to anti-circumcision protests in Palm Beach this past weekend.

It was a refreshing change of pace.

With President Donald Trump taking a rare weekend away from Mar-a-Lago — he’s scheduled to be back again this weekend — the usual protesters had the weekend off.

And it made room for Bloodstained Men, a national group that goes around the country raising the alarm about male circumcision. The group’s protest on Palm Beach was part of a 19-day tour through Florida.

About a dozen of them walked down Worth Avenue dressed in all white with fake red blood stains on their crotches while holding signs that said such things as “I Did Not Consent” and “Foreskin is Not a Birth Defect.”

“What we found in Palm Beach is that the police are so used to protesters there, so they were very good to us,” marcher Jason Fairfield, 58, said. “They thought we were easier to deal with than the protesters they usually get.”

I can’t decide whether Bloodstained Men is just an elaborate performance art project or an earnest group of Americans who have looked very hard to discover an available grievance.

“We’re just letting people know that there’s an issue,” Fairfield said. “I don’t want there to be one person in America who can say I’ve never heard of anybody complaining about circumcision.”

I’ve fallen for this sort of thing before. I once wrote about a protest by people wearing “Ban Breast-feeding Now” T-shirts.

“Breast-feeding is an immoral act,” the leader of the group told me. “It leaves people with an oral fixation. And the worst part of it is, the child doesn’t have a choice.”

By this weekend, we’ll be back to normal, which means that the complaints about choice will take the form of “Not My President” signs and gripes about unpalatable health-care options.

I suspect we’re going to miss