Tag: James Dobson

Religious Families Regularly Beat Their Children; Abuse Study

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Christian Abuse, Homeschooling, Religious Child Abuse, Religious Trauma

GERMAN CHURCHES UP IN ARMS OVER ABUSE STUDY

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Jennifer Stahl’s blog Yeshua, Hineni. It was originally published on November 25, 2013.

German Bible. Photo by J. Stahl.

German Bible. Photo by J. Stahl.

In following the story of the Twelve Tribes, I had become aware of a study on religious families and their children, tendencies towards abuse and such being carried on within Germany. I had heard about the study. But not being registered to either the Evangelical, Free Evangelical or local Catholic Churches, we were not polled for the study, though we are a religious household.

I am somewhat curious as to what was in the survey itself. It seems rather revealing that the Free Evangelical churches are showing many of their members do, in fact, regularly beat their children.

For those who do not know, this is illegal to do in Germany.

One of my many concerns within the homeschooling movement and the greater German church community (especially after coming out of this environment in the United States) is to get away from the punitive and corporal punishment mindset, seeing children as sinful inconveniences unless they’re perfectly behaving like little adults and back to what the Bible actually teaches; namely love and parenting being a job of parent and child to do together.

My second major concern was finding on Amazon.de teachers such as: Michael and Debi Pearl (To Train Up A Child is now removed, but No Greater Joy volume 1, volume 2 and volume 3 remain); Ted Tripp has three books represented (this remains, and as does this also); James Dobson‘s harmful books; Bruce Ray’s Withhold Not Correction (also a Spanish edition!); Gary Ezzo‘s books; Elyse Fitzpatrick’s; Tim Kimmel‘s (there is a second book here), and a couple other religious punitive-based child training manuals can be found.

Finding those books means that there is a market here in Germany. That, as someone who was raised so punitively, terrifies me. It terrifies me because this means there are other children being raised this way, who will not know a day in their lives where just being children is not a sin.

I had heard that some time back, that one branch of the Evangelical Churches in Germany had made statements against corporal punishment and other punitive discipline methods, which created some shock when I saw the results of this study: 45,000 students from 9th grade forward and about 11,500 adults were polled (so over 50,000 individuals) and they found that one in six very religious children are smacked by their parents or given other punitive disciplinary methods against their undesirable behavior(s).

In the Catholic and other Protestant students, the rate is considerably lower, if not rare.

The results of the study were published here, and does run through Google Translate in a mostly discernible manner into English. The name of the study is “Christian religiosity and parental violence. A comparison of familial socialization of Catholics, Protestants and Members of the Free Churches.”

More on the study and why everyone’s up in arms:

With parents from free churches that have no academic training, but declared themselves as “religious” or “very religious”, the trend is even more pronounced: More than a quarter of the surveyed children from these families has at some juncture suffered massive violence in their household. The study’s authors also provide a possible explanation: There is “a Christian tradition of parental driven beating as discipline for children.”
NDR – Freikirchen wehren sich gegen Gewaltstudie

The findings in the survey are quite shocking to me. I’ll post some of the figures below for those of you who don’t have time to sift through a pages long PDF:

image1

Source: http://www.ndr.de/regional/niedersachsen/freikirchen109.pdf

image2

Source: http://www.ndr.de/regional/niedersachsen/freikirchen109.pdf

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Source: http://www.ndr.de/regional/niedersachsen/freikirchen109.pdf

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Source: http://www.ndr.de/regional/niedersachsen/freikirchen109.pdf

Now, these are in order, but without all of the information behind what makes this all so shocking. What I want to point out is that this is consistent with studies done in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and elsewhere as it pertains to parental violence towards children and its affects on the children involved. One study paper that someone had pointed me towards a couple of years ago was “The Long Shadow: Adult Survivors of Child Abuse.” Psychology Today has several articles about this phenomenon as well. One that stands out in my memory is “The Lingering Trauma of Child Abuse.” (Note: My list is not exhaustive, but just to give an example of what one will find on the subject.)

Articles referenced within this NDR article and the PDF are as follows:

…in the late 90s the German Parliament had established a Study Commission to look at so-called sects and mind-control groups. The study found that in fundamentalist Christian communities there is a widespread “…significant advocacy for physical punishment…”
NDR – Kinder schlagen im Namen Gottes 21.12.2011

NDR.de: Critics say the national church must be clear in distancing themselves from such fundamentalist positions. Shouldn’t you make it clearer that you do not agree with such  positions [about corporal punishment being biblical]?

[Kerstin] Gäfgen-Track: In the case of these parenting books and this position, I can speak for the national church, because we draw a very clear line of demarcation. We have nothing to do with such, so we want to continuing having nothing to do with such. We wish to strongly condemn such counselors. [Ted Tripp and so on]  
NDR:  “Wir verurteilen das aufs Schärfste” 21.12.2011

…as they contradict the law and [Christian Beliefs], there is a secret culture of spanking among devout Christians… Parents who follow these beliefs belong to denominations such as those [found in the] Evangelical Free Churches and the Jehovah’s Witnesses who are apt to taking the Bible literally, and consider doubts about the Word of God as whisperings of Satan.
Süddeutsche Zeitung: Liebe geht durch den Stock 30.9.2010

…It is striking that the violence of evangelical parents seem to have a lasting effect on their young. With [such] systemic beatings, it may be that parents seek to break the will of children so that they would assimilate the beliefs of adults; warn psychologists..
Süddeutsche Zeitung: Schläge im Namen des Herrn  17.10.2010

There was a study published in April of this year (2013) by infoSekte in Zürich, Switzerland entitled “Erziehungsverständnisse in evangelikalen Erziehungsratgebern und -kursen.” (Yes, this too can be run through Google Translate!) It is 61 pages long, detailing “Problematic trends such as corporal punishment or psychological violence arising in connection with certain child rearing methods … [and] possible effects of certain parenting styles.” Also explained in the document is how Switzerland signed and ratified the UN Rights of the Child in 1997; and such parenting styles are incompatible with such an agreement.

The UN Rights of the Child is the very same document that many Christians in the United States have pushed for a refusal to ratify since the 1990s.

(The US has signed, but not ratified as of this date in time.) Also something to note; Michael Farris has really pushed home-schoolers into a frenzy over it as taking away parental rights to discipline punitively and claim it is “biblical.” (For the uninitiated, Michael Farris is the head of Patrick Henry College, The Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) and loosely affiliated with Schuzh, which defends many German home-schoolers in court. You may have recently seen Michael Farris in the news pushing against the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

If you get a chance, please do read this study. I understand that 61 pages is awfully long, but it is worth it. There is a serious problem when familial violence becomes an accepted piece of one’s culture and religious upbringing — when we normalize it to the extent that no one is shocked at all.

Issues brought forward by the Twelve Tribes in Germany are not at all shocking in many parts of the United States because such methods have become so normalized.

So many people believe it is the right thing to do. Anything contrary is “unbiblical.” That is not to say that there are not Christians, like myself, who believe that corporal punishment is actually what is contrary to the Bible.

If one wishes to claim that the Bible teaches beating their children, I would have to recommend you go back and actually investigate those claims for yourself as this is not understood to be the case within the Jewish community; and from whom we get the proof-text “spanking”/”smacking” passages from. It is a purely Christian phenomenon that came into place some time in the middle ages, as far as I can find at this juncture. Before, corporal discipline was for adult members of the faith who wished to submit themselves to flagellation.

One book that discusses this phenomenon and suggests a better way is Samuel Martin’s Book, Thy Rod And Thy Staff They Comfort Me: Christians and the Spanking Controversy.  I have others, should you wish to peruse them, but they are not free.

There are wonderful articles referenced here in an older post on my blog and I also have a ton on my Pinterest parenting boards, should you have an account there.

If you don’t know about the Pearls and their harmful teaching, I’d be happy to throw you more than the recommendation to read Hermana Linda’s Blog and this review of the Pearl’s ministry.  I would also like to mention that any court willing to speak with me personally is more than welcome to discuss punitive upbringing, homeschooling, corporal punishment proof-texts, etc.  I’m not an expert, but I’ve lived through it and am working to change things with my children and advocating for others to the best of my abilities.

Update: Michael and Debi Pearl and critiques about them and information on the Hana Williams case were on CNN last night via Anderson Cooper. If you still doubt the methods this couple advocates, look no further.

I would like to leave with a closing message by Robbyn Peters. It is “Violence: A Family Tradition.” For those who are still unconvinced, I ask that you please consider Robbyn’s words and investigate for yourself.

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Hate Group Focus On The Family’s James Dobson Admits He Failed

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Focus On The Family, Hate Group, James Dobson, Religious Fundamentalism, Religious Reich, Religious Right, Right Wing Crackpots, Right Wing Crazies, Right Wing Hatemongers

A demoralized James Dobson admits his defeat

by Steveningen

Maggie Gallagher isn’t the only religious conservative to be feeling a loss of optimism in the new year. In his January newsletter, the hate group Focus on the Family founder, James Dobson comes out and admits that “Nearly everything I have stood for these past 35 years went down to defeat.” What he fails to understand, or more likely admit to, is why. In his newsletter he proceeds to lay the blame for his failures on the doorstep of President Obama, the Democratic Party and the disappointing Judas Iscariots of the Republican party. There is no acknowledgement that in re-electing this President, the country provided a sound repudiation of Dobson’s brand of extremism. It wasn’t any of the factions he cited in his newsletter that brought about his defeat. It was the electorate, who, among other things, has grown weary of the distortions and ugly tactics employed by social conservatism.

Now let me share my heart with you. I’m sure many of you are discouraged in the aftermath of the National Elections, especially in view of the moral and spiritual issues that took such a beating on November 6th. Nearly everything I have stood for these past 35 years went down to defeat.

Dobson then goes on to apportion blame to the Democratic party as a whole, outlining “four shocking components of the Democrats’ 2012 platform.” The lies and distortions he presents as evidence is typical of this man. Let’s examine two of them.

1. Abortion should be legalized through nine months of pregnancy.Imagine full-term, healthy babies across the nation being poisoned or dismembered a few days before normal delivery. What a tragedy!

Yes, what a tragedy, if it had any basis in reality. I was completely nonplussed to learn that one of the Democratic platform plank called for the willy nilly aborting of full-term babies. Of course the Democrats have proposed no such thing, but Dobson doesn’t let facts get in the way of fundraising.

2. Same-sex marriages should be permitted by law in every state in the nation.In May, Barack Obama was pictured on the cover of Newsweek with the caption, “The First Gay President.” His policies for the family were affirmed by liberal voters on November 6th. The Supreme Court recently agreed to consider the same-sex marriage issue. If they rule that it is the law, they will open the door to a redefinition of marriage in every state in the land. The family and the nation will never be the same. Nevertheless, neither Democrat nor Republican Congressmen have uttered a word of concern about it. They are deaf and mute while the very future of this great country hangs in the balance. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) passed by an overwhelming vote a few years ago, but it will be overridden if the Supreme Court issues an adverse ruling. But, who in Congress cares?

Clearly the religious conservative cheese stands alone. Only the brave fundamentalists are standing up for inequality. Ha! If only that were the case. The Republicans in the newly minted 113th Congress have made it a priority to continue defending the federal ban on recognizing gay marriage by approving additional spending on outside counsel. But again, mentioning this fact wouldn’t go a long way in helping him get panic donations.Dobson winds up his screed with this oft-repeated chestnut about the tyranny of our Dictator in Chief.

Well, the election is over and we have a president who often ignores the Constitution and imposes dictatorial powers on the American people.

Of course he provides no citations of how President Obama has ignored the Constitution or how he has exercised one iota of those magical dictatorial powers. The rhetoric is as weak as his political significance. Yes, James Dobson, it is true. Everything you have stood for for 35 years has been going down to defeat. It hasn’t been completely defeated though, and I sense you know it. Why else would you still be making these thinly disguised calls for money if there wasn’t still a dime or two to be eked out from your dwindling base of easily manipulated people. This once fully raging river of cash is slowing down to a trickle and when it has finally dried up, my hope is that you will have too.

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Republican Gomorrah | Jane Smiley Reviews

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Reich Wing, Religion, Religious Reich, Religious Right, Religious Zombies, Republican Anti-Science, Right Wing, Right Wing Buffoons, Right Wing Crackpots, Right Wing Crazies, Right Wing Culture Wars, Right Wing Extremism, Right Wing Fascists, Right Wing Hypocrites, Right Wing Lies, Right Wing Nuts

Jane Smiley Reviews “Republican Gomorrah”

By Max
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley on Republican Gomorrah: Terrific...but appalling.Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley on Republican Gomorrah: “Terrific…but appalling.”

Jane Smiley’s review, from the Huffington Post:

About twenty years ago, I read an article about a death row inmate who had shot a clerk in a convenience store. The way the murder was presented by the man on death row was mysterious–his hand just rose up and the gun went off. Shooting the clerk in the face in the midst of a robbery wasn’t in fact his fault. He never said, “I shot a man.” It just happened.

I thought of that man while reading Max Blumenthal’s terrific, but also, of course, appalling new book, Republican Gomorrah. Apparently there isn’t a single person in the present incarnation of the Republican party who does anything. Things happen–God does it. Satan does it. No Republican is an agent of his or her own success or failure, sin or redemption. It just happens.

The consequences of this lack of responsibility are there for all to see–screaming threats, guns at rallies, unhinged behavior every time a Republican doesn’t feel the way he or she wants to feel, absolute sense of powerlessness leading directly to an absolute will to power. Because that was the thing that struck me about the murderer in the 7-11–he had the power and in his own last moments, the clerk knew it. But the killer, no matter how well armed, never felt it.

Republican Gomorrah is a frightening book because it is clear to all of us on the outside that the various Republican operatives who surround James Dobson and his ilk have no consciences and will stop at nothing. They invoke the name of God for purposes that shame God absolutely–hurting, destroying, maiming, and damning others who either don’t accept their beliefs or don’t acknowledge their power and righteousness. Of course that is frightening.

 

But Blumenthal’s cast of characters, beginning with Dobson and his prodigal son, Ryan, and including John Hagee, Sarah Palin, Ralph Reed, Charles Colson, Judith Reisman, Christina Regnery, Donald Wildmon, et al. strike the reader as above all else very small–egocentric, narrow minded, uneducated, selfish, and resentful. Each of these qualities is destructive in and of itself. The combination is turning out to be coercive. Even those of us who are immune to the emotions these people play upon are getting more and more nervous about the power that they wish to exert.

Blumenthal does two things that no one else I have read manages to do–the first of these is that he organizes the network. He shows how Ted Bundy is connected to James Dobson is connected to Gary Bauer is connected to Erik Prince is connected to Ralph Reed is connected to Jack Abramoff is connected to Tom Delay is connected to Tony Perkins is connected to David Duke is connected to Mel Gibson, and so forth, and in the course of tracing these connections, he informs us, or reminds us, of the crimes and misdemeanors these people have committed.

Two of my favorites are James Dobson’s son Ryan’s messy divorce (Dad seems to have paid the settlement–did he not dare to discipline? Or did he discipline too much?) and David Vitter’s habitual recourse to a brothel in New Orleans where Republicans “wanted to be spanked and tortured and wear stockings–Republicans have impeccable taste in silk stockings” (the madam is talking about men). Republican Gomorrah is full of crimes–both those we’ve already heard of, such as Abramoff’s and Ted Haggard’s, and those we haven’t (there is good evidence that Texas billionaire T. Cullen Davis, funder of the right wing Council For National Policy, ordered hits on his estranged wife, and succeeded in murdering his step-daughter and the wife’s boyfriend).

This aspect of the book reminds me of a Scottish novel called The Private Memoirs And Confessions Of A Justified Sinner by James Hogg, in which, once a man believes he is among the saved, he can commit any sin he wants to and be sure he will go to heaven. Once Davis was “saved,” for example, he said, “My goal is to get to heaven. I’ll do anything it takes to get there, and I’m not going to let anything stand in my way.” He must have thought getting to heaven was just another power play.

And power plays are the key to right wing psychology. Right wing psychology is the other thing that Blumenthal has to offer. At the periphery of this world is your run-of-the-mill bully, a man like Jack Abramoff, whose brutality is well remembered by his high school classmates, but who sang like a bird once he was caught. At the center of is James Dobson, a much more destructive figure than Abramoff, who advocates, in the strongest terms, child beating, and not only child-beating, but dog-beating. At one point he brags about going after the family canine (who weighed twelve pounds) and engaging in “the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast.” As for children, the goal is to keep beating the child until “he wants(s) to crumple on the breast of his parent.” In other words, Dobson is a proud sadist who thinks sadism is kind of funny, and who, over the years, has successfully advocated sadism as the only workable form of child-rearing.

It order to understand the deeply disturbing effect Dobson and his theories have had on our culture, Blumenthal cites Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom, about the psychology of Nazism and authoritarianism, and Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer. Insofar as he finds the documentation, Blumenthal points out how many of these powerful Evangelical Christians were beaten and abused as children (including Dobson). It’s a high number. The beatings, often arbitrary, cruel, and frequent, were then, in many cases, backed up with constant lessons about God–that he is arbitrary, that he is cruel, that he demands obedience above all things, and that he surpasseth understanding. The point of these exercises is to establish the powerlessness of the child, his shame and guilt as a worthless sinner, and his absolute fear of thinking for himself. He will then take his place in the hierarchy and thereby reinforce the existence of the hierarchy.

Blumenthal goes pretty far with this psychology, but, in my view, not far enough. I’m sure he was reared by liberal parents, who gave him a sense of responsibility, curiosity, and autonomy, and since he is only in his thirties, I don’t think that he really empathizes with the tortured and damaged souls that he has been interviewing and watching for the last few years. I don’t think he understands their fear–how deep it is, how constant it is, and how arousing it is. I don’t think, in fact, that Max Blumenthal looks within and sees evil. I think he looks within, and says, “I’m okay; you’re okay.” That’s the goal of liberal parenting, and as we can tell by statistics he cites concerning unwed pregnancy, divorce, and occurrence of STDs, liberal parenting works–atheists and agnostics, for example, have a much lower rate of divorce than Evangelicals, and states that have sex education in the schools, rather than abstinence-only education, have lower rates of teen pregnancy.

But a child who is beaten enough eventually comes to understand two things above all–that the world makes no sense (and so why try to make sense of it?) and that the world is so dangerous that to be oneself, or even to try to figure out what oneself might be, is a death-defying exercise. There is safety only in two things–conforming to a group and, as a part of that group, dominating and even destroying other groups. The rules of the group can be anything at all, as long as the members of the group abide by them. And other groups have to abide by them, too, or the painful and arbitrary rules that group abides by are meaningless. The beaten child’s sense of terror can only be assuaged by evanescent feelings of power, because in relation to his parents and to God, he is defined as powerless. When he “crumples” on the “loving” breast of his parent (and in my view a person who administers a beating to a living being who is 1/16th his size doesn’t know what love is) he accepts his powerlessness and he also accepts that power is what defines this life. That’s where your freedom and mine come in.

Many of the Evangelicals Blumenthal discusses are Christian Dominionists–that is, they differ from the Taliban only in their choice of doctrine. Their uses of that doctrine (to dehumanize women and other groups, to never share power, to control every aspect of every life within their power, and to create society as a steeply hierarchical structure with them at the top) are those of the Taliban.

It’s an eye-opener to read about R.J. Rushdoony, son of Armenian immigrants who fled the Armenian genocide of 1915. You would think that a man whose family escaped mass murder would go on to espouse peace, love, and understanding, but Rushdoony went the other way, taking literally the 613 laws in the Book of Leviticus. In his book, The Institutes of Biblical Law, he advocates capital punishment for “disobedient children, unchaste women, apostates, blasphemers, practitioners of witchcraft, adulterers,” and homosexuals. Gary North, the Presbyterian Christian Reconstructionist, is his son-in-law, and, while not backing down on the mass death penalty, advocates stoning rather than burning at the stake, because stoning is cheaper (and of course that is a factor, because there would be a lot of people to exterminate). As for who would be doing the killing (of you and me, if they could catch us), well, Christians would, but not because they wanted to. Ever unable to accept responsibility, they assign agency to God, who wants us killed, who will beat us until we “crumple” on his “loving” breast, a God who has given us all sorts of talents, skills, and interests, but is, like these Christian Dominionists, interested only in power. I believe his motto is “Adore me or I will hurt you.”

Can you believe in a God so small? When I was a parent of young children, I, too, got frustrated, and I, too, thought a spanking might be a good thing. I soon realized that my motives for administering physical punishment were highly suspect–more anger and frustration than care for the child or knowledge about effective methods. I then saw a show about child-rearing, in which a woman who firmly believed in child-beating aroused far more resistance in her beaten daughter, and had much more family disruption, than the parents who ignored the tantrum and then used the technique of redirection to train their toddlers. Works with horses, dogs, and other animals, too. It was then I decided that if I, in my human weakness, could put two and two together concerning free will and proper behavior, surely God could, also. I didn’t want to believe in a God who was a smaller being than myself. And I don’t.

The ray of hope in Blumenthal’s book is that the right-wingers he talks about tend to be so psychologically unstable that they don’t have much staying power–think Ted Haggard. But they have numbers. The bad thing about that is that they could take control. The defeat of Sarah Palin, Conrad Burns (R-MT), George Allen (R-VA), Rick Santorum (R-PA), James Talent (R-MO), and Mike DeWine (R-OH) brought us “back from the brink” according to the website Theocracy Watch. But only back from the brink. The good thing is that they would not be able to maintain what we call a government for very long (see George W. Bush). The bad thing is that they would destroy the country as we know it while they were trying. If I take the long view, well, I think, Stalinism lasted about 25 years, Nazism 12. The Iranian Mullahs have been at it for 30 years. Russia and Germany survived, Iran might, as well. But generations were lost in all these places. And Stalin and Hitler didn’t have nuclear weapons.

I think about the 22-year-old clerk in that convenience store, looking down the barrel of that pistol. He probably had no idea that his killer had no sense of agency, hardly even knew what he was doing, was seeing his hand as separate from himself. But I have to feel sorry for the killer, too, subject to feelings that he could not label that were terrifying and overpowering. I bet he was beaten, shamed, and neglected as a child. I bet, afterward, he wished someone, somehow, had stopped him.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/republican-gomorrah_b_290293.html

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Newt Gingrich’s Wife a Whore Says Religious Reich Leader James Dobson

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Uncategorized

With the American Religious Reich cuddling up to gay-hating, woman-hating, sodomy-obsessed Catholic fascist Rick Santorum, comes the inexorable fundi demonisation of potetional GOP presidential contenders.

We already know that the GOP’s Dominionist wing wants to re-criminalize homosexuality and control the wombs of every woman in America, but we can now officially say that slut-shaming is part of the evangelical belief system political calculus as well.

James Dobson, the decrepit founder of Focus on the Anus Family was one of the fundie luminaries invited to a Texas ranch with 15o other fundie “big thinkers” (I use that term very loosely) to figure out who they were going to back as the anti-Romney. They settled on Santorum as their man, but the real news is what Dobson said in ruling out Newt “serial adulterer” Gingrich. (The Politico):

“Dobson first talked about how great Santorum is,” recalled one source, who had first-hand knowledge of Dobson’s comment. “(He said) ‘I want to tell you that I’ve gotten to know Karen (Santorum) and she is just lovely. She set aside two professional careers to raise these seven children. She would make a fabulous first lady role model. And Newt Gingrich’s wife, she was a mistress for 8 years.”

Another source confirmed the account, and said Dobson concluded the sentiment about Callista Gingrich with, “Who do you want as your first lady?

“It was like a chill (set into) the room,” said one source.

The last time I checked, it takes two to tango, and Gingrich’s “Little Newt” was slutting around with Calista before she joined him in holy matrimony. How come that bit of business doesn’t come under fire in the House of Dobson?

The GOP is completely out-of-control when it comes to misogyny in this election cycle. It’s so bad that I don’t expect Newt — who is pandering to the hard right with every ounce of his being — will even bother to publicly defend his wife on this front.

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Sadism and Religion Go Hand in Hand – The Culture of Religious Child Abuse

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Religious Sadism, Religious Violence

The culture of Christian child abuse

Since I know you readers are deeply interested in fighting the good fight for social justice in the bedrooms and parlors of this nation, I’m sure you’ve seen this horrible video:

This was posted by Hillary Adams, whose father is Judge William Adams, who is a judge for Aransas County, which is in the Gulf region of Texas. Adams admits that it’s him in the video, and in the style of abusers everywhere, is leaning on the “just a scratch” excuse, as well as skepticism-inducing claims that his behavior here is somehow out of character. (Compare to Cain’s statements this past week for another example of how this works.) No one is buying it, of course, since we all see with our eyes how hard he whipped his daughter with the belt. Additionally, since Hillary set the camera up in her room specifically to capture this, we have to assume a) that this had happened enough before to compel that choice and b) that she was getting really good at predicting when he would go off like this. Research into domestic violence shows that it’s not uncommon for victims to become well-attuned to when their abusers have a desire to whip the shit out of someone, and they do in fact get good at predicting it. This also belies the abusers’ claim that it’s a matter of “losing your temper”, but that they are in control of their emotions.

When something like this happens, it’s important to put it into context so people realize that behavior like this is not isolated or unusual, sadly. Jill has addressed how common it is for people with disabilities, who are often especially dependent on caregivers, to suffer abuse like this. Hillary has stated that Adams abused all his family members, but it seems he had a special hankering for whipping his only daughter, who happens to suffer from cerebal palsy, so we can see how it fits into this pattern. I want to add to this, and discuss abuse in the context of fundamentalist Christianity.

Now, I couldn’t find any religious information about Judge Adams, but he is a Republican, raising the chances to “high” that he’s an evangelical Christian. More importantly, if you watch the video—which I only recommend you do if you have the stomach for this sort of thing—one thing will really jump out at you if you follow the workings of the Christian right. Adams keeps using somewhat strange terms like “disobedient” and “submission”. For secular people, even those who have witnessed abuse, it’s really rare to see someone spell out their goals of inducing submission and obedience. (Or maybe not. I’m sure commenters have some thoughts.) Other language is employed, in no small part because abusers also have to enact a mindfuck on their victims, and convince them that the abuse isn’t somehow apart from the values of their time, which for secular people and moderate religious people include equality and individuality. But the words “obedience” and “submission” are flung around Christian right circles without any hesitation. When speaking to outsiders, they often try to play that awful-sounding language off as something not as bad as it sounds. Their schtick is to pretend that they’re just using archaic words for the funsies, but when they say something like “submission”, they don’t really mean submission. (Michele Bachmann tried this tactic when asked about her pride in being submissive to her husband.) But they do mean it. It’s impossible to believe otherwise, when you’re reading, say, James Dobson extolling the virtues of whipping your kids into submission, or Christian housewives on blogs discussing how much of a struggle it is to frame their legitimate concerns into a submissive framework where even asking questions can sometimes be seen as an affront to a man’s godly right to have the final say over household manners. They do in fact believe in a strict hierarchy of power in the household, and in fact, I would argue that fighting against feminist progress on the home front is their main organizing principle.

Spanking your children is therefore a big fucking deal to the Christian right. I would honestly say, reading their materials, that being able to whip your children at will is number two in their list of political concerns, right after abortion. Gay marriage was rising on that list for awhile, but it doesn’t seem to have the endurance that fears that the government is going to take their spanking rights away do. In fact, the Christian right has been successful at blocking the United States from ratifying the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Children. (We are the only nation besides Somalia not to ratify it.) Within Christian right circles, enthusiasm for spanking is really, really high. At Stuff Christian Culture Likes, the blogger describes the general pro-spanking attitudes:

They don’t feel that spanking is the same thing as hitting. They will defend it to their dying breath. Christian culture is very concerned that the government may take away their right to spank.

Pretty much all right wing Christian child-rearing manuals are paens to beating your children. And I mean beating. If confronted about this, fundies tend to backpedal and play off their obsession with spanking as if it’s the same thing as a mild pat on the ass delivered to a toddler who has tried to run out in traffic or something. But they lean on the “rod” talk in the Bible, which means they are big on using weapons to beat your children. James Dobson believes you should beat children with a paddle or a tree branch, which he has somehow managed to rationalize into “loving” behavior. And he’s probably the most mainstream! Other, less popular family “advice” books get even more elaborate when it comes to describing how to select the weapons to use against someone so much smaller than you. Now, that doesn’t mean that all or even most fundamentalist Christians whip the shit out of their kids like this guy did. However, once you’ve created a cultural expectation that abusing your children is not only acceptable but expected, you can expect people to take it to the next level. Outside of the cursing and the threats to hit her in the face, in fact, there’s not much in this video that falls outside of the Christian right prescriptions for “disciplining” a child.

Regardless of Judge Adams’ personal beliefs, Christian right ideas about family hierarchy and paranoia that the government is coming to take away their “spanking” rights (I hate calling it “spanking”, which allows people to equate it with painless bottom pats, which I still think aren’t such a great idea but can’t be meaningfully compared to whippings in any way) are the water that conservatives are swimming in when it comes to the Bible Belt. That context needs to be understood when looking at this video. It’s not enough to be angry with Judge Adams and call for him to leave his job. We need to look at an entire culture that teaches that beating your children is a good thing to do.

By the way, I want to quickly address the people who are all over internet defending Adams by saying, “I was whipped and I turned out okay.” Using the surival skills of victims to condone abuse is not okay. That’s like saying it’s okay to throw yourself downstairs because two years from now, that broken leg will be completely healed. The here and now counts as much as the later. A child is more than the adult they will become. They are a human being now, and their pain and suffering now matters.

via pandagon.net – it’s the eye of the panda, it’s the thrill of the bite.

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