LEICESTER, United Kingdom — Don’t get my friend from South Africa started about American exceptionalism. Don’t mention Western influence, either. And the United Nations is a touchy subject, too.

A Finn, a Swede and I found ourselves looking down the barrel of his pointer finger last week at dinner. The topic was human rights intervention, and he was against it.

What right, he asked, has the West to pry into other nations’ affairs? What are the real motives of intervention? Historically, “human rights” has been an excuse for other pursuits.

He said, perhaps correctly, “We see their cultural difference as deviance.”

In France, for example, lawmakers, coaxed by President Nicolas Sarkozy, are moving toward banning burqas in some public places. For a country founded on ideas of equality, any custom that forces women to hide themselves is only furthering patriarchy and injustice. I admit I agree.

But I’m a Christian, Democratic college student brought up in a liberal democracy, stuffed with talk of equality, bills of rights and independence since the first grade, and I’ve never been to a Muslim country. I’m in no good place to tell anyone not to cover her face if she wants to.

I am in a place, however, to tell a mother — to force a mother — not to mutilate her daughter’s genitals if it’s going to cause “pain and trauma” and lead to “hemorrhaging, infection, tetanus, cysts, sterility, pain during intercourse, complications in childbirth and sometimes death,” as Elizabeth More writes in the Journal of International Communication.

At that point, the issue becomes a concern for anyone with a half-developed conscience and a sliver a pity.

This is a case where the cultural difference is a deviance. Even the oldest traditions can be intrinsically, and yes, universally wrong. There’s a good case in the study of ethics for cultural relativism, but when it comes to infections and death, relativism must compromise with universal notions of decency.

I hope I’m not being naively optimistic that such universal notions exist. I don’t think my American exceptionalism is showing.

In fact, I think the United Nations should intervene in the form of international pressure for the case against the death penalty and for gay marriage in the United States. Our country is blatantly violating articles three and 16, respectively, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (an admittedly Western-biased document, I should note).

And what about far less nuanced violations of human rights? The genocide in Darfur. The rampant starvation in dozens of countries.

There are religious, cultural and political systems in place around the world that inhibit what I’m arguing are elemental, universal human rights — things like life and freedom of thought and dignity. They must exist. Whether granted by God or reason or the collective will of mankind, they must.

But cultural mores also exist.

I’m throwing my lot in with More: “Universalism in human rights must be infused with cultural sensitivity.”

So here’s my maxim: Any human rights intervention should be pursued with no objective other than to protect human rights, and it should be agreed upon by a broadly representative, multilateral body and by the state in question.

Ben Wolford is a junior newspaper journalism major and a columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].