Spanking is in the news again, and parents have every reason to be concerned that anti-spanking fanatics will not rest until corporal punishment is banned throughout society. In recent weeks, the spanking issue has gained public attention from Brookline, Massachusetts to Great Britain and several points in between. A concerted effort by self-designated child experts is directed at subverting parental rights and parental authority by eliminating spanking and replacing discipline with relationship of negotiation between parent and child.

In Brookline, citizens debated the spanking issue at a town meeting after resident Ronald Goldman convinced the Board of Selectmen to propose a measure "recommending" that parents refrain from spanking their children. According to Goldman, his goal was mutual respect between parents and children. Goldman, who has no children, said he was never spanked as a child. Nevertheless, he became interested in corporal punishment while doing research for a doctorate in psychology. Sound a bit strange? Actually, in liberal Brookline, Massachusetts, Goldman's crusade against corporal punishment fits the profile of political correctness.

Columnist Margery Eagan of the Boston Herald says that Brookline is not only an anti-spanking town, it is an "anti-discipline town, too." Eagan provided a hilarious report of Brookline mothers who buck the trend. These mothers, offended by the atrocious behavior of other children, quietly and secretly discipline their own. As one mother reported, "I put on a hat and dark sunglasses to go to McDonald's."

Of course, this is all consistent with Brookline's liberal culture and worldview. One mother, Monique Spencer, told of neighbors who would not allow children to visit because of a microwave oven in the home. She also told of giving small battery-operated toys as a party favor at a recent event. "A mother came up to me outside our next play group upset and said, 'I want you to know we do not have batteries in our home . . . . We are anti-battery.'"

Well, the anti-battery, anti-microwave oven, anti-spanking crowd got turned down at the Brookline Town Meeting, when citizens voted 105-to-78 not to adopt Goldman's proposal. Richard Wheeler, a Brookline real-estate attorney, made a motion to postpone the measure indefinitely, arguing that spanking "is an issue of personal freedom and personal choice." As Wheeler continued, "I didn't feel it was appropriate for the institution of [the] town meeting to interfere in parental decisions." Wheeler's comments indicate that some semblance of common sense remains in Brookline, but it may be hanging by a thread.

The spanking controversy is not limited to trendy Brookline. Earlier this year, the Canadian Supreme Court turned back an effort to outlaw spanking in that country. Nevertheless, the Canadian Parliament is expected to take up the issue in the near future, with human rights agencies lobbying for a change in Canadian law to eliminate corporal punishment in all Canadian provinces.

Spanking is already outlawed in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Cypress, Croatia, and Latvia. Nations considering a ban on corporal punishment include Italy, Germany, Bulgaria, Belgium, and the Republic of Ireland. Much of this is now driven by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, which is pressuring countries to ban corporal punishment or face censure and public criticism. Anti-spanking activists claim that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child requires a ban on all physical punishment.

Now, the British government is poised to deal with corporal punishment, and the Church of England appears to be joining the anti-spanking bandwagon. The issue of spanking has received a good deal of attention in England, with a notorious case resulting in the prosecution of a British father by an international court, simply for spanking his son.

Kenneth Stevenson, the Bishop of Portsmouth is leading the effort in Great Britain to remove the allowance for "reasonable chastisement" from British law.