Thou Shalt Beat Thy Kids

The Christian Institute have sent out an email as follows:

I would greatly value your prayers today (Monday 5th July) as the House of Lords debates whether to change the law on the parental right to smack. It now seems likely that the issue will be put to a vote.

This is extremely serious and could greatly affect Christian parents.

Please pray that

* the law would not be changed
* Peers and the media would see through the false and misleading claims of the children's rights lobby
* there will be strong speeches in the Lords against changing the law
* Christian Institute staff will be given great wisdom

There is growing pressure on the Government to ban all parental smacking, or come as close to this as possible.

Today Peers will be faced with a bewildering range of amendments ranging from an outright ban on smacking through to Lord Lester's proposal for a ban where prosecutors believe that the smack was serious.

It seems from press reports that the Government may be about to permit a free vote on this proposal from Lord Lester. In theory the amendment does not ban mild smacking, in practice it is not as simple. We have two very serious concerns about this proposal.

(1) It hands huge powers over to prosecutors and social workers. If they have a personal anti-smacking agenda they could try to use the new law to criminalise loving parents.

(2) It will sow great confusion in the law. We fear the proposal will lead to a 'rachet effect' where successive court cases decided by politically correct judges intervene ever more closely in family life.

Thank you for all your prayers.

Yours in Christ,


Colin Hart
Director
THE CHRISTIAN INSTITUTE

Ok. What was that again? We must pray that we continue to be allowed to hit our children. Indeed, this is extremely serious to us.

Umm...?

It scares me. I know they are horrible to gay people, but what have children done to deserve this?

Their briefing document talks of loving smacks, "The current law works perfectly well", and that a ban would open the door to massive state interference in family life and it would be hugely resented by the overwhelming majority of the public.

Ok. Right. Loving smacks... where do I start? If you love someone, you don't hit them. Fin.

The current law works perfectly well... ummm does it? Look at Victoria Climbie. I know it's been an overquoted example these last few days, but surely it does prove that the current child protection laws do not work perfectly well?

And about interference in family life and that being resented... isn't that what we said about Section 28? About partnership rights? About leaving me to live my own life with the person of the gender of my choosing?

Yes, I resent YOUR interference. I'm hurting noone. People hitting children are hurting someone. Get your priorities right. Use your frighteningly large amount of power for good. Support people who are good, and fight things that really are bad, like war and starvation and ethnic cleansing. And leave me and my girlfriend and my friends alone.

Hmm. Where was I? Sorry. Yeah, if the Christian Institute want to shout about things, why on earth are they shouting that they need to be allowed to continue to beat their kids? It really does make you wonder.