SACRAMENTO, February 5, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Parents, grandparents and concerned citizens have apparently repelled the proposal to ban spanking of young children in California. Assemblywoman Sally Lieber of San Jose, a Democrat and the second-in-command of the California State Assembly, declined to introduce her spanking ban Thursday, as was expected.
News of Lieber’s proposal which generated nationwide media coverage resulted in Californians and people throughout the country flooding the State Capitol with opposition phone calls and emails.
“This home-invasion bill has been stopped cold by parents and grandparents who know that to love children is to discipline them and show them the way to live,” said Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families (CCF), a leading nonprofit, nonpartisan California-based pro-family organization, which has been strongly opposing the spanking ban. “Because so many people have spoken out, the Democrats in Sacramento realize that their liberal agenda is offending a whole lot of people.”
Lieber pushed to make parental spanking of children under age 4 a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail, a $1,000 fine, or both.
In the face of a constant stream of phone calls and emails to her and other state legislators, Lieber declined to introduce her bill during the Jan. 29 and Feb. 1 floor sessions.
“Sally Lieber mistakenly believes that parents who infrequently spank their children should be arrested, and she wrongly guesses that children who were spanked will respond by committing crimes,” said Thomasson. “But the obvious truth is that most children who were appropriately spanked become law-abiding citizens, not criminals. Any elected official who supports a ban on spanking is attacking dads and moms and usurping their God-given responsibility to raise their own children.”