{"id":22269,"date":"2015-09-24T05:30:49","date_gmt":"2015-09-24T09:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=22269"},"modified":"2015-09-23T12:40:48","modified_gmt":"2015-09-23T16:40:48","slug":"child-abuse-as-cultural-relativism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2015\/09\/child-abuse-as-cultural-relativism\/","title":{"rendered":"Child abuse as cultural relativism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The New York Times has published a piece <\/a>condemning the U.S. military for ignoring cases of child sexual abuse in Afghanistan.\u00a0 And yet, a few years earlier, the Times published a piece<\/a> praising military briefers who told the troops to ignore the custom of \u201cboy play\u201d\u2013older men taking young boys on \u201cLove Thursdays\u201d to use them sexually\u2013on the grounds of cultural relativism.\u00a0 Read Mollie Hemingway\u2019s expose of the Times<\/em>, linked and excerpted after the jump.<\/p>\n

From Mollie Hemingway, Flashback: In 2007, NYT Published Op-Ed Saying Afghan Child Rape Was No Big Deal<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

It\u2019s somewhat odd for The New York Times to publish this expose of our toleration of the practice considering that in 2007 they published an op-ed critical of the military for not being more culturally relativist. As the 2007 op-ed notes, approvingly, if you can believe it, we turn a blind eye to child rape because our military bought into ideas from academic elites that it would be the right thing to do.<\/p>\n

The point of the piece by Richard A. Shweder, an anthropologist and professor of comparative human development at the University of Chicago, was that we weren\u2019t going far enough. The piece criticizes one anthropologist for wearing a uniform and being armed and worries about anthropologists being co-opted by the military to advance military missions. Note this part:<\/p>\n

Nevertheless the military voices on the show had their winning moments, sounding like old-fashioned relativists, whose basic mission in life was to counter ethnocentrism and disarm those possessed by a strident sense of group superiority. Ms. McFate stressed her success at getting American soldiers to stop making moral judgments about a local Afghan cultural practice in which older men go off with younger boys on \u201clove Thursdays\u201d and do some \u201chanky-panky.\u201d \u201cStop imposing your values on others,\u201d was the message for the American soldiers. She was way beyond \u201cdon\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell,\u201d and I found it heartwarming.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That sounds like our New York Times<\/em>!<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s a completely unsurprising argument in a time and place overrun by cultural relativism.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times has published a piece condemning the U.S. military for ignoring cases of child sexual abuse in Afghanistan.\u00a0 And yet, a few years earlier, the Times published a piece praising military briefers who told the troops to ignore the custom of \u201cboy play\u201d\u2013older men taking young boys on \u201cLove Thursdays\u201d to use […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,29,41],"tags":[97,4065,615,4066,3659,3865,1690],"class_list":["post-22269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-islam","category-media","category-sex","tag-afghanistan","tag-child-sexual-abuse","tag-cultural-relativism","tag-homosexual-acts","tag-moral-relativism","tag-new-york-times","tag-pedophilia"],"yoast_head":"\nChild abuse as cultural relativism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The New 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