Everything Afghanistan • Western legal tradition regarding rape has roots that are not all that different from those we condemn in places such as Afghanistan.

Western legal tradition regarding rape has roots that are not all that different from those we condemn in places such as Afghanistan.

A reader’s comment posted online in response to Friday’s New York Times article about Gulnaz’s pardon is typical. After expressing disbelief at the subjugation of women in “most of the Muslim world and large parts of Africa,” the reader added: “By the way, I must once again say how much I love America. We have our problems but boy, we do it right!!!!!!!!!!!!” Even the liberal Daily Kos observed, “We could never imagine anything like this happening here.”

But before we get too smug, we should recognize that our legal tradition has roots that are not all that different from those we condemn, and you don’t have to look too far back in history for outrageous examples. For example, it was only in 1980 that the California Legislature made it illegal for a husband to rape his wife. As late as the 1950s, the right of a husband to take his wife by force was enshrined in the laws of every state. As legal authority Rollin Perkins put it in 1957: “A man does not commit rape by having sexual intercourse with his lawful wife, even if he does so by force and against her will.” Shocking, yes, but that had been the law for millenniums. When a woman said “I do,” she was deemed to have given lifetime consent to her husband’s sexual demands.