Posted on 05/30/2012 9:51:48 AM PDT by JohnKinAK
Do you believe that parents should be able to spank their children? Do you ever express that opinion to others? If so, then you could be sent to prison. Sadly, that is exactly what happened to one pastor up in Wisconsin recently. A minister named Philip Caminiti was sentenced to 2 years in prison for simply teaching that parents should spank their children when they misbehave. Please note that Caminiti was not accused of spanking anyone or of physically hurting anyone. He was put in prison simply for his speech. He was put in prison simply for what he was teaching others to do. Whether you agree with spanking or not, this should be incredibly sobering for all of us. Increasingly, speech is being penalized in the United States. Much of the time, the focus of the attacks by the forces of political correctness is on religious speech. If this trend continues, many of you that are reading this article might be put in jail for the things that you say in the coming years.
When many of us were growing up, once in a while our parents would take out a belt or a wooden paddle and give us a paddling on the behind when we did something wrong.
Was there anything wrong with that?
Of course not.
Yes, there is real child abuse that goes on out there, but in the vast majority of instances spanking does not do any lasting physical harm. Rather, it benefits the child because it helps them learn what is right and what is wrong.
I know that when I got a licking on the behind as a child that helped me to remember not to do the same thing again.
But Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi was absolutely horrified that some parents would actually use a wooden spoon to spank their little children when they misbehaved.
Perhaps that judge should actually try to spank someone with a wooden spoon some time. You simply cannot do much damage with a wooden spoon.
Instead of going after the parents who were doing the spanking, prosecutors chose to go after the pastor instead. They claimed that Caminiti was "the spoke in the wheel of this conspiracy".
Even after Caminiti leaves prison, he will be forbidden from having any contact with his old church....
Caminiti will be on extended supervision for six years after his release from prison. Despite objections on constitutional grounds by Caminiti's lawyers, Sumi ordered that he not have any contact with the Aleitheia Bible Church and have no leadership role in any church. What in the world is happening to this country?
Criminal predators are literally eating the faces off of people, and yet authorities want to go after pastors that are encouraging their congregations to follow the teachings of the Bible?
Have we stepped into a really bizarre episode of The Twilight Zone?
Sadly, this is not the only example of how our free speech is under attack these days.
Up in New York, a new bill was recently introduced that would outlaw all "mean-spirited and baseless political attacks".
I think that would cover a whole lot of people that leave comments on my blog.
The following is how a recent article by Kurt Nimmo described what this new law would require....
New York state government is attempting to pass the measure in both the Senate and the Assembly. The legislation has been referred to the Codes Committee in the Senate, and the Government Operations Committee in the Assembly.
Both proposals are identical and would effect messages posted on message boards, blogs, social networks, and “any other discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.” The law would require websites to post email addresses for “removal requests, clearly visible in any sections where comments are posted.” Those demanding the removal of content they find objectionable, however, would have their anonymity protected.
“Had the internet been around in the late 1700s, perhaps the anonymously written Federalist Papers would have to be taken down unless Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay revealed themselves,” notes David Kravets, writing for Wired. Will we soon see laws such as this nationwide?
Will all blogs and websites soon be at the mercy of the politically correct police?
Up in Buffalo, New York it is apparently now against the law to hand out Christian tracts on a public sidewalk. At least that is what one man was told recently when he attempted to hand out tracts outside of an Italian heritage festival. The following is from a recent WorldNetDaily article....
While handing out tracts to willing recipients on a public street during a public festival, Owen was approached by a police officer who declined to identify himself but told him that the Buffalo Police Department is “the law” and he should stop handing out tracts.
According to the lawsuit: “Subsequently, another police officer, Officer Slomka, arrived on the scene. She quickly informed Owen that they could not hand out tracts in the festival and explained that the prohibition was ‘by our orders.’ Owen asked for her name, and she replied: ‘Slomka, write it down.’ Owen advised that he believed the tracts to be free speech; nonplussed, Officer Slomka reiterated that they couldn’t hand out tracts there and had to go outside of the festival area to continue with their expressive activity.”
Then, “Owen inquired as to whether they would be arrested if they continued to hand out tracts in the festival area, to which, Officer Slomka replied: ‘Yes.’” That almost makes me angry enough to take a trip over to Buffalo and hand out tracts right outside the police station.
Even if you do not ever distribute literature, you should be alarmed at how our freedom of speech is being eroded.
The truth is that whenever anyone has their freedom of speech attacked it is an attack on all of us.
If we are not careful, we are going to end up just like Canada.
At one high school up in Canada recently, a student was suspended from school for a week for wearing a shirt with the following message....
"Life is wasted without Jesus" The student was told that the shirt was "hate talk" and that he would be suspended for the rest of the year if he tried to wear it to school again.
They are coming for our free speech ladies and gentlemen.
They are not going to be satisfied until they have either shut all of us up or put all of us in prison.
It is imperative that we all stand up for free speech while we still can. Once our freedom of speech is gone, the loss of the rest of our freedoms will only be a matter of time.
But then, if it DID happen 150 years ago, the judge and jailers would have to answer to an angry mob of armed American citizens and there would be no SWAT Teams or other sophisticated paramilitary forces there to protect them.
Sumi is the same black robed tyrant that injoined Wisconson’s new laws to protect the people from the public unions.
That judge needs a good spanking
The people of the United States are beginning to reap the seeds that they, via they votes, they so gleefully began sowing many years ago. The harvest will be bountiful,plentiful, lenghty, and bitter.
Seems like something is being held back by the press. I think this is a case of selective journalism - no mention of a jury in the above article, mention of 8 counts of child abuse in this one. Sensationalism drives newspaper sales - truth be damned.
I have mixed emotions on this decision after reading the following article.
http://newsone.com/1952855/philip-caminiti-black-earth/
This is tyranny pure and simple. Liberty, In God We Trust and E Pluribus Unum are gone in all but word.
Yes...but he advocated hitting even 2 month old infants with a wooden stick. That cannot be allowed. However, prison for speech or advocacy should not be punished by imprisonment. He abused/spanked no child.
Maybe they should have done like they do in Singapore and given him a few lashes with one of his ‘rods’.
If an entire jury found him guilty, I suspect there is more going on than a spanking.
We can spank. We can’t beat half to death. Is this what was actually happening?
I agree it looks like Caminiti is trying to impose a form of Sharia-like Christianity which is not good. However he needs therapy not jail.
There must be more to this than mere speech.
And yet Muslim Imams openly advocate beating women.
Any resemblance between this and America is delusional.
Before everyone goes off half-cocked on this, you might want to read this article:
1. He was advocating the use of a wooden dowel (or spoon) to be used to spank children as young as 2 months, in specific instances.
2. It took a jury (not a judge) only two hours to come back with a guilty verdict for his role in what is clearly the abuse of children.
3. Several of his parishonors, mostly relatives, have either already been convicted of child abuse, or have been indicted.
Oh, and I agree that spanking a child is a reasonable punishment at times. But this case was extreme. He essentially advocated beating children into submission because they were “exhibiting ‘selfish crying’,” according to what he told police. Dane County is ridiculously liberal, but that doesn’t mean that its residents and officials are always on the wrong side of an issue. I suspect most of the contributors in here would have made up their minds the same way as the jury, and in even less time than the two hours they took to do so.
Well written! I agree!
“That judge needs a good spanking”
You start with the judge, I’m holding out for Kate Upton.
THIS case is not a example ya want to use, excessive spanking to the point of beating and damage on those too young to comprehend the “reason”, and the entire jury agreed.
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