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.
Perhaps, but it still seems if he wasn't beating the children himself, he was basically convicted of a "thought crime" (as stupid as his thoughts happened to be). I always believed in this country your were free to advocate sacrificing newborn babies to Satan if that was your thing as long as you never actually acted on it (heck you even got the NAMBLA crowd that openly advocates sex between men and boys. What is the difference?) Whatever happened to personal responsibility, punish the parents that committed the act, I assume they were adults who made a conscious choice to listen to the idiot preacher.
He has the right to preach Sharia law if he desires. Now, with that said, where is the line? Would he be allowed to preach that people should commit murder? What if a private citizen told his neighbor that the neighbor should spank his child? Can he be sent to prison? Very slippery slope here.
Gotta take this one with a grain of salt.
Nowhere does the poster list the actual criminal charge that the pastor was sentenced for.
As for forbidding the pastor to ever have a leadership role in a church? I would want to read the transcript. Would seem on the face to be unconstitutional.
Or what if the preacher in the course of his weekly bible readings happens to recite that chapter in Leviticus where it says Homosexuals should be put to death. Then a while later someone in the congregation with a few screws loose kills a homosexual. Under this precedent, the preacher could be locked up for doing nothing but reading a verse as it is written in the Bible. A very slippery slope indeed...
This isn’t a free-speech/free-religion case. It is a true child-abuse issue. He was instructing church members to abuse their children, some as young as 2 months. It is not that he merely advocates spanking with a wooden spoon. He directs parents to beat babies. Do we really wish for “freedom of religion” to serve as a cover for true child abuse? I don’t think so.
Hard to read. What was the charge?
The judicial branch is empowered to keep those convicted of conspiracy to commit child sex offenses from positions in which they might come into contact with kids, I have no problem having the same done to those who conspire to commit child abuse.
Reading some of the other articles out there on the interweb about this case provides an entirely different perspective than does the article at the top of this thread.
Convicted on 8 counts of conspiracy to commit child abuse.
There’s a reason that the article at the top of this thread is hard to read. It wants to obfuscate the actual issue with phony freedom of speech/religion discussions.
Or what if the preacher in the course of his weekly bible readings happens to recite that chapter in Leviticus where it says Homosexuals should be put to death. Then a while later someone in the congregation with a few screws loose kills a homosexual. Under this precedent, the preacher could be locked up for doing nothing but reading a verse as it is written in the Bible. A very slippery slope indeed...
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Not even a close comparison. I suggest you read some of the other articles on this case that are readily googled.
The “pastor” was not reading Proverbs to the congregation, he was instructing them on the use of wooden dowels on the naked bottoms of 2 month old children.
With the last name sumi am I far off in thinking this is a Muslim liberal and perhaps one in the same giving Scott Walker a hard time in Wisconsin?
You call it "instructing," he called it "preaching," but however you characterize it, it is speech.
This IS a free speech case, and this jury verdict is very troublesome.
How do we get the Judge out from the bench? Seems like a typical liberal looking to destroy what is good and just.
Hmmm. Think about that.
So what? Where the members of the congregation not responsible adults who could ignore him? I still believe that unless he was personally beating peoples children with a wooden dowels then he's free to advocate any stupid, idiotic thing he wants. Heck, we have neo-nazi's who advocate killing Jews, the KKK who advocate killing blacks, the Black Panther who advocate killing whites. I don't see them being arrested simply for advocating stupid, illegal acts.
The first 2 paragraphs of your MSM article confirms what the original article contention.
“A Black Earth pastor was found guilty Wednesday of eight counts of conspiracy to commit child abuse for advocating the use of wooden rods to spank children as young as two months.
A Dane County jury took only about two hours to find Philip Caminiti, 54, pastor of the Aleitheia Bible Church, guilty of having instructed members of his flock to punish children as young as infants and toddlers by striking them on the bare buttocks with wood dowels in order to teach them to behave correctly, fitting the church’s literal interpretation of the Bible.”
The great part now is that the children will become wards of the State and CPS, where statisically nation wide they are something like 10 times more likely to be the victims of child sexual abuse.
Please make sure you’re sitting down before reading this!
Jeepers... thanks for the ping.
So what? The constitution says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.It doesn't say "except where one advocates beating children."
The Wisconsin constitution says:
SECTION 3. [Free speech; libel.] Every person may freely speak, write and publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right, and no laws shall be passed to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or of the press. In all criminal prosecutions or indictments for libel, the truth may be given in evidence, and if it appears to the jury that the matter charged as libelous be true, and was published with good motives and for justifiable ends, the party shall be acquited; and the jury shall have the right to determine the law and fact.Again it doesn't restrict itself based on the topic of the speech, but only if the speech is libelous or not. This is a gross miscarriage of justice.
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