1. God Hates the World

Comment #52348 by Phil Regal on June 26, 2007 at 8:17 pm

What is child abuse? If you rob children of their capacity to use their critical reason, that should count for something. If you rob them of the chance to be resonsible citizens that too should count. If you keep them in the bondage of fear of life, that should count. There ought to be a couple of points for teaching hate.

These things seem worse to me than spanking, certainly.

What is sexual abuse of children? Much of it is using them selfishly instead of being properly caring and nurturing. Actually a lot of sexual molesters believe that they are being caring and nurturing and it takes therapy for them to see the errors of their ways. Does society have the right to say they are wrong? Do I have a right to complain about child abuse as a citizen and human being? You can guess that I do feel I have a right to complain about child abuse.

For me the issues are simple, and I am with Richard on this. Bbut of course the whole matter is technically difficult. Fortunately there is some sort of extensive literature on efforts to define the matter legally. For example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abuse

It would be worth trying to refine the concept in the present context.