When we celebrate “diversity,” what exactly are we celebrating?

Here’s some diversity: Recently, Afghanistan’s president pardoned a young woman named Gulnaz, jailed for being raped, provided she marries her rapist:

A government statement said she agreed to the marriage, although her lawyer said she did not wish to marry him.

Gulnaz was raising her resulting child in prison. An EU documentary on her situation, and that of other Afghan women, has been blocked due to concerns for the safety of the women. We are told that her attacker, her cousin’s husband, has given assurances that if she is killed, it would be her own family, not his, that would thus wipe out the dishonor.

On Saturday, I asked, “Is it still wrong if another culture says it is right?”, offering a teacher’s surprising discovery—that his students could not go from pitying a mutilated girl to “judging” the perpetrators. It appears that they have picked up from their “celebrating diversity” classes/assemblies that if the teen’s culture says she deserves it—she does.

To judge from the unexpectedly large response (about 12,000 visits), many people have been forming the question that the teacher’s article answers: What exactly are we celebrating when we celebrate “diversity”? Are we celebrating the idea that there is no such virtue as justice . . . that it all depends?

Many years ago, a friend took a course that included ancient Babylonian law. She recounted a legal point that puzzled her: If a woman was raped, she was punished for fornication or adultery. We wondered if Babylonians thought that a woman should lead a life of such seclusion that she couldn’t possibly be raped unless she unambiguously invited it. But given the burden of agricultural labor that fell to women in those days, our interpretation didn’t really fit.

Over the years, I started to learn more about value systems that do not credit human beings with intrinsic dignity or rights. In the theistic West, one description of intrinsic rights has been that citizens are “endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable Rights; that among these, are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” This phrase from the American Declaration of Independence captures the idea that our rights are not given to us by government, as a privilege that can later be withheld. Our nature as human beings demands them, and legitimate government recognizes them.

But we must not assume that everyone thinks that way. The Babylonians, I learned, did not believe that. They believed that the god of a given city owned the people, animals, and land, and could deal with them without regard to justice. We get a sense of this from the Babylonian Flood story: The gods decide to drown the human race because they are too numerous and make too much noise. In an equivalent story in the Bible, God decides to wipe out civilization because “The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” So in one story, the gods regard humans as an inconvenient possession, like a noisy air conditioner. In the other, God regards humans as accountable to the virtues of justice, and temperance—which they know about—and they have utterly failed. They are punished for the wrongs they have done; the one righteous family is saved.

Traditional Afghan culture has inherited the Babylonian approach, as far as women are concerned. A woman is the possession of a male relative, and then of her husband. She has no intrinsic rights and she may lose even the right to live if she dishonors her family by being raped. It’s not relevant that her dishonor was involuntary; she is damaged goods, unfit for sale. The damage can only be repaired by her marriage to the rapist (which restores her male relatives’ honor), punishment, or death.

Unfortunately, well-meaning efforts by outsiders to “improve the lot” of Afghan women frequently fail because outsiders have not been taught to recognize that the value system of the society fails the test of justice. Development aid will change nothing if the society continues to see women as possessions.

We certainly aren’t helping matters by raising a generation of young people who are unable to think clearly about virtue. Granted, there are injustices in our own society too. But there is little risk that we will suddenly begin to ignore justice; we are too constantly reminded of our failings by a free media.

The danger is that we will fatuously assume—and teach—that advanced technology can by itself address lack of justice. Why should it? Does technology recognize or subscribe to any virtues at all? Instead of wondering why material help doesn’t change anything, we should rather ask why is it so hard to even discuss these questions straightforwardly at home.

Note: Gulnaz, currently free, has attempted to put off the undesired union with her rapist by demanding a rather large dowry.