“Are you really surprised? They’re a bunch of damn savages over there,” I heard a library patron say to his companion about the AP article, “Controversial Afghan marital law under attack” last week.

The two chatted about the following information:

KABUL, Afghanistan-President Hamid Karzai signed legislation – a new Shia Family Law – on April 2, 2009 that many human rights groups and some Afghan lawmakers argue legalizes the rape of a wife by her husband.

One of the most controversial articles of the law specifies that the wife be “bound to preen for her husband as and when he desires”.

“As long as the husband is not traveling, he has the right to have sexual intercourse with his wife every fourth night”, Article 132 of the law says. “Unless the wife is ill or has any kind of illness that intercourse could aggravate, the wife is bound to give a positive response to the sexual desires of her husband”.

The article explained that the law does not affect Afghan Sunnis, but is intended to regulate family life inside Afghanistan’s Shiite community, “which makes up about 20 percent of this country of 30 million people”?

Critics worry the law destabilizes the gains of women enacted after the fall of the Taliban’s stringent Islamist administration between 1996 and 2001.

(During this regime, the Taliban had prohibited women from going into the public arena without an entire body-covering burqa – besides her eyes – and a male family escort. Since the regime’s fall, millions of girls have begun to attend school several women own their own business(es). Of 351 parliamentarians, 89 are women).

Many fear that the increase in hard-won rights of women pushed Kazai to sign the legislation to enhance his re-election prospects – since it is still presumed that women will vote as their husbands do.

Safia Sidiqi, a lawmaker from Nangarhar province who condemned the legislation, was quoted in several publications that she cannot remember parliament debating or voting on the law.

“It’s disgusting how they treat women,” the library patron said after a few moments of conversation. He shook his head. “Good thing ‘our boys’ are over there straightening (stuff) out.” He flipped the page and continued to read more articles.

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The fact that these patrons acknowledged the unpleasant life circumstances of Afghani women is a positive step. Yet, they still consider the situation through “us” and “them” rhetoric. Because of this, they forget that issues like marital rape does not just happen “over there”.

Until 1976, it was totally legal “over here” (in America).

And, in 1989, J. C. Campbell and P. Alford published the article, “The Dark Consequences of Marital Rape” in the American Journal of Nursing, which estimated that 10 to 14 percent of all married American women are raped by their husbands.

The first marital rape case to reach the U.S. court system took place in 1978 in New Jersey, where Daniel Morrison was found guilty of raping his estranged wife. Six months later in Oregon, John Rideout became the first husband charged with rape while living with his wife.

There have since been subsequent prosecutions of the crime. A current and local example occurred on May 22, 2007 when Anthony Woods became the first Erie County man convicted of raping his wife.

However, Woods was not convicted because his wife reported that she was being raped. Rather, police arrested him on June 12, 2006 after he tried to force his wife to empty her bank account and her screams provoked a bank employee to call police.

During his arrest, Buffalo media quoted that Woods boasted that he couldn’t be arrested for rape because, “She’s my wife.”

Maybe not so obviously, but what happens “over there” is always happening “over here” in some fashion. Spousal rape is an unacknowledged crime that continues primarily because the question of consent is clouded by societal beliefs about marriage and subsequent roles of husband and wife.

If the boys were really “straightening (stuff) out,” this crime would be recognized as a crime. Until that happens, Afghanistan is everywhere.

Originally Published Sunday, April 19, 2009