I was shocked last year when I heard the results of a rape trial in Canada. National Public Radio reported that even though the two men accused of rape confessed their crime and showed no remorse, they received no jail time.

They were immigrants from the Caribbean, and the judge explained letting them off the hook by saying, “their crime needs to be understood in a cultural context.”

When relativism is considered the ultimate virtue, the results are usually unfortunate. Thankfully, however, liberal judges were not the ones who led history’s greatest civil rights movement: the movement in the West to end slavery.

Slavery did not end by relativism, it ended by moral revulsion and by millions of individuals over the course of 200 years standing up for what was right.

Slavery had existed for thousands of years in cultures all over the world.

Then in the late 1700’s, an anti-slavery movement that was begun by Christians in England brought the ancient institution crashing down.

The Quakers were the first religious group to oppose slavery. They were followed by a conservative group of leaders in the Church of England led by William Wilberforce.

Wilberforce kept supporting bills in the British Parliament to end the slave trade, and they were continuously defeated for 20 years before the first one passed in 1807.

The scholar Thomas Sowell has reported that in this age before mass-movements, mass-communication and mass-transit, the response from the people was incredible. In one particular month, over 700,000 signatures arrived at Parliament in petitions to end the slave trade!

Movements by groups in other countries, including the U.S, followed the abolitionist movement in England.

Some historic sites in the fight against slavery can be seen in Iowa.

The Lewelling Quaker Shrine in Salem was once used in the Underground Railroad.

Also, the Todd House in Tabor, Iowa was used to store weapons used in the Kansas free-state fight.

But England became the leader in abolishing slavery. After it had outlawed its own slave trade, it began to bully other nations to do the same.

England pressured the Ottoman Empire to end its slave trade and threatened to board their ships when they did not comply.

England could be quite insistent in dealing with foreign slave-traders. A high point came in 1873 when, according to Thomas Sowell, “British warships anchored off the island of Zanzibar and threatened to blockade the island unless the slave market there closed down. It closed.”

Slavery remained in other countries long after it was abolished in the West.

The country of Mauritania, for example, did not “officially” abolish slavery until July 5, 1980 (although it still exists there).

And slavery also continues in remote parts of the Sudan.

The Marxist government has not stopped villages from being raided by Arab slave traders who often kill the men and take the women and children as slaves.

The battle to end slavery is nearly won. But there are many other evils left.

Inter-tribal, mass-murder in Africa, female genital mutilation in some Arab countries and “sex tourism” in southeast Asia involving underage children of both sexes are all on that list.

These are things to be stamped out, not tolerated. They are wrong, not “diverse.”

The West should push hard for their elimination, not ponder the legitimacy of making any moral claim.

Moral revulsion — not moral relativism — gave rise to the public support to abolish slavery. The Quakers did not consider slavery to be “different”; they considered it to be wrong.

The work done by them and countless people who followed in their “intolerant” footsteps brought freedom to millions.

The story of the fight against slavery is one of the most dramatic and amazing in history. It is also a story you can be part of.

Christian Freedom International is working to end slavery completely.

In the mean-time, CFI is traveling directly into dangerous regions of the Sudan to buy slaves and reunite them with their families. Donations can be given by calling 1-800-323-2273.

Ideas of right and wrong may have been educated out of a lot of college students these days, but it is time more of us recaptured the abolitionist spirit.

We should learn about the heroes who dug the grave for the institution of slavery. And we should help the heroes who are currently putting the final nails in the coffin.

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Benjamin Studenski is a senior in industrial engineering from Hastings, Minn.