Cool New Kansas Bill Would Let Everybody Spank Your Child
Let's say you live in Kansas and you are super duper into the idea of spanking your kid because you can't think of any other way to address disciplinary issues or just because you are an abusive bastard. (Why choose?) And let's say that you also wish that someone would just clarify how much spanking and bruising you could do? Well, you are in the right place, people, because Kansas is coming correct by proposing the biggest bestest slap-your-kids-around law ever. Freedom!
House Bill 2699, which was introduced by Rep. Gail Finney, exempts corporal punishment by a parent from the definitions of child abuse, endangering a child, battery and domestic battery.
Corporal punishment is defined under the bill as using one’s palm to strike the clothed buttocks of child up to ten times and using reasonable physical force to restrain the child. The bill acknowledges that this may lead to bruising.
Good thing this gives you a nice firm number. 10 strikes good, 11 strikes bad, and what's a little bruising between friends? Better still, the bill makes sure that if you want to send a note to school along with little Johnny, his teachers can whack him too.
The bill also says that other legal guardians and step-parents of children can spank a child, and school personnel and other people can, too, if they obtain written permission from the child’s parents. Spanking may be used on children up to age 18, or older, if the child is still enrolled in high school, the bill says.
OK, so the proposed law says that you must spank a child on the buttocks, and can restrain him or her to do so AND you can do it til the kid is a full-grown adult. We just can't see any downside to telling school personnel that they should tackle a high school senior and spank the kid. No liability or safety concerns at all nosiree.
The doofus behind this bill is a deputy state attorney who is pretty sure that kids are just soft deceptive ruffians anyway.
In written testimony [McPherson deputy county attorney Britt] Colle has prepared, he said parents “no long know how to discipline children” because they are so afraid of being charged with a crime. The result, Colle said, is “an entire generation” of defiant children who lack discipline.
“Children have become fully aware of what they can legally get away with and play their parents off against each other and authorities,” Colle’s testimony said. “They can act out of control and get away with it because they can play the abuse or battery card and also get a change of custody to a more lenient parent.”
Oh, those children. Forever playing the abuse card so they can go to a different parent. America suffers from a veritable epidemic of that. Thank god we've got Kansas to ensure that kids get spanked at mommy's house and daddy's house and stepdaddy's house and schoolhouse, ensuring that they have nowhere to run. Think of all the character they'll build.
But it's just so easy.
You could conceivably increase the amount of exercise people get. Somebody may have to chase the child around the house, possibly even around the yard and down the street a couple of times before one is able to restrain the now exhausted child. Good cardio workout there.