A global morality gap.
I'd never heard of the term until I read a recent article in the Spectator. It suggests that there is a significant gap in morality between two parts of our world, and that this distinction may be as or more important than other distinctions (such as First World / Third World, developed / developing, etc.) that are more commonly talked about.
This gap is between the part of the world that has been enlightened, that believes in human rights and all that we can be, and the part that maintains strict moral codes, where men are not equal to men and women are definitely less, where might is right and non-heterosexual is wrong. The part of the world where police are not your friends, where citizens are ten to one hundred times more likely to be murdered than citizens of Europe, and other nightmares are commonplace.
The author suggests that the gap is only going to get wider. Whether that is true, I don't know. On one hand, many countries in Africa are currently enacting extreme laws especially in regard to gay people. On the other hand, Nigerian author Binyavanga Wainaina, who came out recently, is hopeful that though there will be a difficult time ahead, lgbt rights "have traction". And while the western world is very keen on human rights, there are extreme elements within it which would be happy to see many of those rights removed and a more fundamentalist control re-established.
Read
the whole article and give it some thought.
Update: In late January 2014, thousands of French citizens marched in the streets of Paris yelling, "Jews get out of France" while giving Nazi salutes. (
source). Around the same time, there were also extensive anti-gay protests related to the government legalizing same-sex marriage. Perhaps the gap is not as clear-cut as some think...