The Rod, redux

As long as no law against it is passed, this and similar will be the
result. I have a sample of the instrument you see in the photo on the
page below. It's purchased to hit children with, no age limit
included.

And legal in all states.

Do you approve?

Take a stand, spankers and anti CP advocates. Be heard now. 0:-}


http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/01/10/
campaigner_targets_spanking_tools_sale/

Boston.com THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING
Susan Lawrence is pressing US authorities to ban sales of The Rod, a
$5 whipping tool.
Susan Lawrence is pressing US authorities to ban sales of The Rod, a
$5 whipping tool. (Globe Staff Photo / John Tlumacki)
The Boston Globe
Sale of spanking tool points up larger issue

By Patricia Wen, Globe Staff | January 10, 2005

ARLINGTON -- On a spring day, Susan Lawrence was flipping through a
magazine, Home School Digest, when she came across an advertisement
that took her breath away. In it, ''The Rod," a $5 flexible whipping
stick, was described as the ''ideal tool for child training."

''Spoons are for cooking, belts are for holding up pants, hands are
for loving, and rods are for chastening," read the advertisement she
saw nearly two years ago for the 22-inch nylon rod. It also cited a
biblical passage, which instructs parents not to spare the ''rod of
correction."

The ad shocked Lawrence, a Lutheran who home-schools her children and
opposes corporal punishment. She began a national campaign to stop
what she sees as the misuse of the Bible as a justification for
striking children. She also asked the federal government to deem The
Rod hazardous to children, and ban the sale of all products designed
for spanking. Lawrence says striking children violates the Golden Rule
from the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament: ''In everything do to
others as you would have them do to you."

Her effort exemplifies the passionate debate among Americans over the
role of corporal punishment in modern child-rearing and highlights the
clashing interpretations of religion that underlie many cultural
divisions in the United States.

Where some see a time-honored form of discipline, others see a
sanctioned type of child abuse. Both sides cite biblical passages and
scholarly pediatric research to back their views, as well as anecdotal
evidence of children who went astray because of too little -- or too
much -- spanking.

Though corporal punishment is on the decline in the United States and
the American Academy of Pediatrics strongly opposes the practice,
spanking children remains common. National polls in 2002 indicated
that two-thirds of American parents approved of spanking, and more
than 20 states sanction corporal punishment in schools. Most parents
said they use bare hands if they spank a child, though roughly one-
third of parents in a 1995 Gallup poll said they had used ''a belt,
hairbrush, stick, or some other hard object" to strike their child's
bottom.

To draw public attention to the issue, critics of corporal punishment
in Brookline proposed a resolution considered at Town Meeting two
months ago denouncing the practice, a measure that ultimately failed
by a narrow margin.

When Lawrence spotted the ad for The Rod, she began collecting online
petition signatures protesting the device, eventually amassing more
than 500 supporters, and set up a ''Stop the Rod" website. With
support from US Representative Edward J. Markey, a Malden Democrat,
Lawrence appealed in the fall of 2003 to the US Consumer Product
Safety Commission to ban the sale of The Rod. But last month, the
commission said it had found ''no basis for determining that the
product constitutes a substantial product hazard."

She has argued that products designed to administer corporal
punishment of children ought to be taken off the market, as flammable
sleepwear and some toys deemed choking hazards have been.

''People are making money off these devices to beat children," she
said in an interview last week. ''You have to respect children's
bodies and their rights."

Lawrence's campaign has reached Clyde Bullock of Eufaula, Okla., the
creator of The Rod. Bullock told the Globe last week that he has
decided to voluntarily halt production for now, in part because of
pressure from Lawrence and her supporters.

''I feel it's run its course," said Bullock, an auto mechanic who said
he had sold hundreds of rods through his small-business venture,
Slide's Manufacturing Co.

Another reason he is halting production, he said, is that the company
that makes the cushioned grips for the rods has pulled out of the
venture.

But Bullock, a Southern Baptist, said he stands by the virtue of The
Rod, which, he said, is safer than a belt or paddle. He said he
believes his product is in keeping with biblical teachings that rods
be used only as a ''last resort" to train children. He opposes its use
on babies. He said he sold the device at a rate of ''a few a week"
over the last six years or so. Many of his customers returned for more
rods, and cited the Scriptures when they made their purchases, he
said.

''I'm one of these simple people," Bullock said. ''The Bible is what
it is -- I'm not trying to change it. God is right. We have to have
faith in that."

Bullock's convictions about corporal punishment are shared by many
religious leaders. James Dobson, founder of the group Focus on the
Family, one of the nation's prominent Christian evangelical
organizations, has written about the proper use of spanking for
children who willfully disobey parents, sanctioning the use of a
''neutral" object such as a paddle in order for the hand to be
reserved as ''an object of love."

When used ''lovingly and properly," Dobson wrote on his website,
corporal punishment is an effective tool to instill discipline and
does not bring about lasting emotional damage to a child. ''God
created this mechanism as a valuable vehicle for instruction," he
wrote.

Critics of the practice say parents do not recognize the harm they can
do when striking their child. Dr. Eli Newberger, a Boston pediatrician
who has written extensively about child abuse, said corporal
punishment hinders the trust between a parent and a child and can
cause children to become more aggressive and violent. The use of
devices to deliver punishment, such as The Rod, can easily lead to
bodily injury, he said.

''There is no question that physical damage can be done by this
object," he said.

Some countries, such as Sweden and Germany, have made spanking
children illegal. But in the United States, a parent's right to use
physical punishment is ''deeply built into American culture," said
Murray Straus, a sociology professor at the University of New
Hampshire in Durham and a critic of corporal punishment.

Straus said states do not interfere with parents' rights to punish
their child unless it causes physical injury.

Lawrence said she plans to continue her crusade against corporal
punishment in an effort to halt sales of The Rod for good. She said
she wants to be sure that Bullock's manufacturing operation is legally
shut down. She said she will continue to press her case before the
Consumer Product Safety Commission. Markey said that this week he
plans to ask the commission for an additional review of The Rod,
insisting that it ''poses an unreasonable risk of injury."

Lawrence, a former church musician who grew up in Wisconsin, said she
regrets that the religion she holds dear is being used to justify
corporal punishment. While many Christians cite lines in the Bible's
Book of Proverbs that speak of the disciplining force of ''the rod"
and repeat a line from a Samuel Butler poem, ''Spare the Rod and Spoil
the Child," she prefers to cite Jesus Christ's teachings in the New
Testament about nonviolence.

''I'm a Christian too," she said. ''And I don't want anyone to be
harmed."

Patricia Wen can be reached at .
© Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company


http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/01/10/
campaigner_targets_spanking_tools_sale/