On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 4:25 PM, Grimmund <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

For that matter, spousal rape was only criminalized in the US in the mid-1970s, the last two holdouts making it illegal in 1993.

And it's still legal in many unreconstructed patriarchal societies, along with several other violent means of controlling women. Even where such practices are made technically illegal, they may still be practiced long afterwards. For example, the Indian practice of sati (the usually-forced suicide of a widow following her husband's death) was first outlawed nationwide in 1861, yet the Indian Congress felt it necessary to pass a Sati Prevention Act (making aiding, abetting and glorifying the practice illegal) in 1988.

While I agree that morals are related to cultural norms, that doesn't necessarily mean that violence is universally criminal.

Amen.

Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein

"I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as Muhammed." Alexis de Tocqueville (1843)

"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester

"It has been my experience that a gun doesn't care who pulls its trigger." Newton Knight (as portrayed by Matthew McConaughey), to a scoffing Confederate tax collector facing the weapons held by Knight's young children and wife.