"I would have expected that they would be among the first to outlaw such atrocities -- and nothing that I have read in this thread explains why they are not. To say a slap won't damage a child is no more valid than saying it won;'t damage your wife."
Barabara,
Here you go equating Adults with Children. I suppose you think society will also move in the direction that a Child should be held accountable for their actions to the same extent as an adult? It seems you want your cake and to eat it. You want Children to have the same rights as Adults, but for them not to be responsible for their actions. Unless of course you favour the model whereby children are hauled in front of courts for damaging property or hitting another child? (Which most people including yourself I hope would think is ridiculous). Do the wives get some special exception from the law when they use violence or damage property or are they not held to account by the law? Does the husband have the responsibility to look after his wife? Must he make sure she is not left at home alone in case she may injure herself?
When has it ever been legal to beat your wife? It could well be that courts have not enforced the law adequately in the past, but that would be another matter.
When this anti-smacking law was passed, politicians over here kept harping on about how the present law was 150 years old. As if that was a bad thing - it must be really outdated they said. Well, the laws against murder and theft are hundreds of years old. Does that make them outdated?
The original law stated that Parents may use "reasonable" chastisement. This sort of framing obviously does allow for cultural changes of what would be considered "reasonable". However, according to you, I guess the lawmakers of 150 years old worded this piece of legislation hoping that children would still be flogged, no?
And with that law in place there already had been a cultural shift. However, politicians acted as if the word "reasonable" was allowing children at the moment to be beaten with parents going unpunished. However, never did they once actually illustrate this with an example. And from cases I read in the newspaper courts were not all lenient towards parents that were beating their children. But now we have a law against smacking in this country that makes it a crime if it causes "scratch marks" or "reddening of the skin".
Great!!! Next time that your child falls down and scratches his leg, expect that when someone accuses you are doing it of being hauled through the courts. I am sure both parent and child will find this a growing experience, rather than the traumatic nightmare it actually is.
Let's get big brother into our houses, watching us to make sure we do not break the law and spank our kids. Why not?
I am sure anti-spanking Objectivists will like that one. After all, it is just a cultural change in attitude.
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