Sally Lieber believes whole-heartedly that all spanking is child abuse,exactly on a par with beating, burning, or cutting a child. She changed her bill last year to target spanking with an implement rather than spanking with the hand. But she is very open about the fact that spanking with an implement is merely the first thing she wants to outlaw.

My mother spanked me with an implement exactly once. I remember the circumstances clearly. I was six. The winter before, the creek behind our apartment house in Virginia had frozen over, and my dad, after trying the ice cautiously, had called me down for a joyous adventure on the amazingly altered surface.

Months later, I ventured into the creek bed by myself. This time, the creek was a brown torrent. My mother spied me down on the banks of the flooded creek. I could barely hear her shout, so loud was the roar of the waters, but I could see her face: furious, frightened.

I remember that she spanked me with a hairbrush. Curiously, I do not remember the spanking itself, only the enormity of having been spanked with a hairbrush. But I know that I never went dangerously near a flooded creek again. More to the point, I never drowned.

It is a good thing that AB 2943 was not in effect when my mother spanked me with the hairbrush. If it had been, my mother could have been arrested and charged with child abuse. She would have faced trial in criminal court. The jury would have been instructed to consider a spanking with any implement - a hairbrush, a rolled-up newspaper, a slipper - to be unjustifiable. My mother could have been sent to jail for a year. She could have lost custody of me and my sister. That would have been a hell of a lot more traumatic for me than a spanking with a hairbrush. Child abuse - beating or breaking a child - is already against the law.

More to the point, it is wrong. But children are irrational, inexperienced creatures. They run into the street. They play with matches. They run with scissors. They hit each other. Children need to be taught to be careful and good. Sometimes the most effective way to teach them is with a strong negative reinforcement, i.e. a spanking.

Needless to say, Sally Lieber has no children. That might explain why she thinks that a spanking is the same as a beating. It is harder to understand why Jose Solorio of Santa Ana, Hector De La Torre of Los Angeles, Fiona Ma of San Francisco, Anthony Portantino of La Caqada Flintridge and Curren Price of Inglewood would vote to pass it, except that they are all Democrats, as is Sally Lieber. The only Republican on the committee, Greg Aghazarian of Stockton, voted against.

California is facing a severe budget crisis. Schools are cutting music and art programs. The sub-prime mortgage fiasco still threatens. Jobs are being off-shored. Oil hit $114 a barrel. And Sally Lieber thinks that a good use of your tax dollars is criminalizing spanking.

AB 2943 will next have to pass the Assembly Appropriations Committee. In the short term letters (not emails) to the Committee may stop the bill ...for this year. But in the long run, Sally Lieber has demonstrated that she is determined to pass anti-spanking legislation.

The only way to stop her permanently is to vote her out of office, along with all her supporters. On the other hand, if you favor idiotic intrusions on parental rights, by all means, vote for Democrats.

"Spanking is something that must go, say some psychologists, although character building is a feat sometimes accomplished through the seat."

- Edward Anthony

Cynthia Walker Cynthia Anne Walker is a homeschooling mother of three and former engineer. She is a published independent author. Her column is published in The Dispatch every Friday.