Issue date: 4/20/09 Section: Opinion

I think the author of "Western civilizations must accept different values" is confusing cultural values with human rights infringements. The law legalizing marital rape for 10 percent of Afghani women is not a cultural value; cultural values are things like modesty, piousness, liking rock 'n roll music, etc. Rape is not a cultural value, and if it is, it is not one a U.S.-backed government should espouse. Would you have described the genocides in Darfur as cultural values? The mass rapes of refugee women? Apartheid? China's long standing tradition of female infanticide? Or how about the Nazi persecutions and genocides? Those were legal oppressions of a group, just like this law. Are they cultural values that western civilization should just "accept?"

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