Christian blogger Lori Alexander has a long history of saying the worst possible thing in every situation, but this week, a few screenshots began circulating of comments she made several months ago in which she describes smacking her children.

She seems to delight in telling other mothers how and how long to hit their kids.

In one case, she talks about hitting her kid for four straight hours. (In that screenshot, I’m assuming she means “spank” instead of “spark.”)

In another, she says “it has to hurt” or else they won’t learn their lesson.

In yet another, she claims to use a “foot-long strap.”

There’s a word for this and it’s not “discipline.”

It’s “abuse.”

It’s the sort of “train up a child” thinking that’s popular in fundamentalist Christian circles. The idea is that your children must fear you in order to grow up healthy, therefore hitting them (no matter how delicately that’s described) is the best parenting tool available. But realize these are people who grew up to believe hitting their kids is okay. They’re deranged. They’re living proof of how that method fails.

Alexander has now come out with a video attempting to defend herself. The lies begin right in the title: “NO, We Did NOT Abuse Our Children.”

In part of the video, she claims she “misspoke” about hitting her kid for four straight hours… before later saying it may have been a four-hour cycle of spanking, then the kid still not obeying, then spanking again, etc.

Which doesn’t help her case.

She eventually summarizes her views:

… if you asked any of our children if they were abused, they would say not in any way, because we loved our children. We’re not abusive. We’re not mean. We’re not mean or unkind parents in any way. We believe in God. We believe that His ways work, and spanking has been around for generations and generations. It’s legal in every single state. And for a reason: It works! … I just wanted to clear that up. We’re not abusive parents. We loved our children deeply. We wanted the best for them. We wanted them to grow up to be disciplined adults.

All of that is the same justification you’ll hear from men who abuse their wives. They’re not abusive. They just wanted to fix a problem. They love their partner…

Of course we never hear from the children themselves in this video. Only the abuser. But even if the children say they’re fine, it wouldn’t justify the method. Hitting your kids is abuse. In this case, Alexander uses Christianity to defend her cruelty. And if your religion can provide a cover for violence, then your religion is part of the problem.

(Thanks to Kyle for the link)

