How could god let this happen . Does god hate women . How would you answer that question . The abuse of women that you refer was in the past tense but its still going on around the world and in the United States as well. And i would say that god does not hate women. I happened to be a christian, and it would be a fruitless search to look for the scriptures and find one single instance where jesus did not treat women either equal or superior to men. And, unfortunately, though, in the entire concept of the bible, 36,000 or so versus, if you are a male and you want to consider yourself superior in the eyes of god, you could find a verse here or there that might confirm your police. But when i have a problem of that kind, i teach bible study every sunday at my local church, about half the time from the hebrew text and have from the new testament but when i get in a quandary about some comparisons that can be difficult, i turned to the words and i see jesus christ to be please with almost everybody im sure that women are exactly equal or even sometimes maybe superior to men. Jesus had 12 disciples. They were all men, and there were no women at the last supper. How would you explain that . You have to remember that jesus also referred to women in a way that nobody had ever done before. Pso said not only with women in public, which had never been done before but he also went into where the despised any recognizable living with a man and in just a few minutes he convinced her he was the son of god and she was the first witness, to go tell the people i have witnessed the long awaited messiah. We know that his mother, mary, is exalted now in many, i think all christian faiths, just because she bore the sun that looked upon women as equal. Mr. President , one of the charming parts of the book is your description of the chivalry of the georgia, the rural georgia that you grew up in. I think it would be interesting for people if you describe that a bit, and you sai say in the bk that you and your wife, roslyn, were virgins when you married, and that Old Fashioned george. And im wondering if you were growing up today, young men and women in 2014, would you still want that to be true . Would you still want to be married as husband and wife as virgin . We argued over who got to ask that question. [laughter] i should have known. It would be some competition. That was a difficult part of the book for me to write, and i really, my wife is my best editor. I did not let her see that part before it was published last night that was too. Wawhen i was a child and growing up, even a young man, it was not promiscuity that was permissive done an argument as it is done now. We are deeply religious. Planes have grown tremendous the. We have 700 people in planes and would have [laughter] and we have 11 churches was still every religious community. But its changed now. I would advise young people if they can to refrain from sexual intimacy until they get married, but i dont criticize my 12 grandchildren or might 11 greatgrandchildren if they decide to do otherwise. And sometimes, affect every year we go on a christmas vacation it is time for my grandsons for instance, have had a very intimate girlfriend was not yet married and legal education, we look the other way when they sleep in the same room and the same bed. You dont cast them out . Ive learned that times change, that we cant have the same morays and promised that we have been. One of the things that happened was i grew up in a segregated community. We were the only white family. We have 55 africanamerican families living around us, that i respect of the black as much as i did the white women. I saw then that it was an intense and legal this commission against black people, and even the white folks who disagreed with it theoretically didnt do much about it because if the white people enjoyed advantages a better job and better pay and better educational system and to serve on juries and make all the selections on voting day. And now we have the same thing on a much greater basis, that is our world, where people know that women are being abused and quite often we dont want to do much about it because it would disturb the way that we occupy the privileged position. Isnt this about power basically . This whole idea of men want to have power over women . And part of it seems to me to be about sexual fear. Men fearing women in some way, that they might and masculine them and that they are afraid of womens sexuality. How do you change that . Thats so much a part of thousands of years of culture long before the bible. The only way i know to change is to use what influence you have as an individual to bring about an awareness of the problem. One way is to be president of the United States and write a book about the subject last night im sure about the subject. [laughter] there are about 20 different forms about discrimination or abuse of women, and ive got a solution in the last chapter for what we ought to do. I would say a lot of the problem, i may do a lot with religion, because there is an interpretation in the bible of superiority for men. Within major denominations like the Catholic Church for instance, over the period of the last 17 centuries or so since the third century it has been ordained by the men leaders of the Catholic Church that women should not be deacons or not decrease. I britain pope francis about this and i got a response i was able to go in the book, and he promised me, not because it was odd, that he thought it should be a greater role for women in the future in the Catholic Church. I was a very devout member of the Southern Baptist convention or 70 years of my life to the Southern Baptist in 1970 excuse me, in the year 2000 decided women should be subservient to men officially and that no one could serve as a priest or a deacon or a chaplain. And they took it to extremes even for them i think because they ordained it in the seminary at the higher level that women couldnt teach in a classroom at the boy was a student. You can find individual verses in the bible that many confirm those bullies. Did you write the popes snail mail . I did. I typed the letter myself and i mailed it to him to the representatives he had in washington that represent the vatican. The snail mail question reflects about president carters book tour, which is he suspects the nsa is looking at his email exodus is a good time to ask you, why would they do that . Do you think they think you are dangerous or youre talking to dangerous people, or they just collect everybody . If you set any today, they have recorded a. If you made a telephone call today, they have recorded it. But that you made a call, it originally with you, and know how long the call lasted. They record the entire thing. They to go back and listen to your words, they say, but if they want to later on they can go back and listen to the exact words that you spoke. I do think that needs to be corrected, and help president obama will do. I would like to see him do by executive order which i think he could, i think to be a delay and maybe an egg situation its a corrective action by the congress. But anyway thats what i have for a long good while known. I face the same question rise in the white house in 1978 when we passed the socalled fisa act. That prevented any Intelligence Agency of the United States from into think with one single telephone call of one q. Mutation of an american citizen unless an objective jury said this was a threat to our security. That prevailed pretty much until 9 11 and then they begin to liberalize this, and laws were passed by the u. S. Congress, most of which were not even read by anybody who didnt should in the intelligence committees, and the rest of the congress didnt know what was there. When it passed the law that still had some restrictions in it, theres no doubt in my mind that nsa went much further than the law permitted, and now i think we are making some said ask you the question i think a lot of people wonder, if he were president today and it was within your power as president to issue a pardon to edward snowden, whose revelations these activities will lead all of us to know what the nsa has been collecting about us and about people, would you do that . Would you offer a pardon to snowden . No. Because you cant pardon someone who hasnt been tried and convicted. And so i think that edward snowden, if i were president , i would tell them what to do but if he decided to go back to the United States and face the actual violations of law that the perpetrator and were found guilty by 12 person jury, and then he was sentenced to death, i would certainly consider a pardon, yes. But i cant say what it would be because i dont have the information that president obama has about what damage has been done to our security apparatus. I just read the Washington Post and a couple other minor [laughter] i think its an understatement to say that you do not shy away from controver controversy. Theres already been a dust up since your book is come up. Youve been doing these interviews from the catholics and the Southern Baptists who say that youre criticizing them unfairly, or treating women badly. Jewish readers are saying that when you said that your lack of relationship with the president was probably due to your views on israel and palestine, and then others on the internet are saying that you were soft on islam in your book. Im sure this is something that you expected, but are there any countries or any faiths that you think are worse than others in their operation of womens . There certainly are, yes. For instance, in some areas of africa, saving egypt for example, 90 of the women in egypt are living now have had their genitals mutilated. Some of them, the cutters were using a razor blade. I met with a number of cutters by the way who have abandoned their profession. And their mother and father and particularly younger brothers who are juveniles, murdered their sisters or daughters because she was sexually abused, or if she violates the order about whom to marry or does Something Like that, then shes killed. Thats not part of religious beliefs. You can find that quote in the Old Testament where it is mandated that if a man marries a girl and finds out shes not a virgin on her wedding night, he can take her back to her fathers front door, and she may be stoned. Jesus forgave the woman who had permitted adultery. But this is something thats been done. But the worst crime that goes on on a global basis that i discover, that i cover in the book is the murder of little girl babies by their parents. And this is done after theyre born when they see that shes a girl, and lately with the advent of sonograms, they can detect the sex of a fetus before its born, and they abort the baby selectively. And there were anywhere from 3060 Million People killed in the Second World War and 160 million women right now and girls are missing from the face of the earth because theyve been murdered by their own parents. This is the most, this is the worst case of womens abuse that i can think of, because the girls have actually been killed. And you point out just now that, actually, those dont have much to do with religion. Right. What im interested in is knowing about religion and different faiths. Is there a faith, particular faith, that oppresses women more than another . The last time i was in myanmar which used to be burma, and ive been there before, i always make a practice of meeting with the religious leaders. And the eastern part of myanmar is next to china, and a majority of people there are christians. And in the northwestern corner near bangladesh, a lot of them are muslims, but most of them were buddhist. And i meet with the leaders so that i can try and discourage the abuse by the men. And the leaders will all tell me that they treat women equally. And then they pause for a few minutes and say, but differently. And the differently means that a woman is not legally abused pause shes a woman, but pause shes a woman, but shes not given equal opportunity to serve god in the own perspective of god. So i think that that kind of abuse takes place all over the world by selected excerpts from whatever religious text you use to present yourself with the worshiped figure, god this our case. Mr. President , ive been traveling as a journalist in the middle east yes. Since 1980 and keep going back. But one of memories that i have thats strong is from 1981 after the assassination of anwar sadat with whom you worked so courageously and effectively on the camp david agreement. And an egyptian said to me after sadat had been killed that it was shameful that anwar sadat let his wife dance with jerusalemmy carter jimmy carter. It brought dishonor on miss rims muslims. A remarkable comment. But what it leads me to ask you is, when we hear things like that that are so outside our cultural experience, how should we deal with them . Did it ever occur to you when you asked mrs. Sadat to dance at the white house that you might be giving deep offense to husband limbs back home muslims back home . Should you wore ily about that . Worry about that . How do we deal with cultures where we may be giving offense much greater than we realize by our actions . If that person had asked he that, i would have said, well, anwar danced with my wife first. [laughter] [applause] but one of the things that i mention in the book was the centers had programs all over the world, and we have found out through my discomfiture sometimes that when i, as a well meaning westerner, go into a local African Community and start criticizing the people about the basic civil human rights of their daughters not to be circumcised, i find that its counterproductive. Its much better more me to stay quiet and to let maybe our staff and so forth work with women in those communities and let the women decide on their own that they shouldnt circumcise their daughter cans. But for an outsider, particularly a westerner whos a christian, to go into a us muslim rural area and start telling people you should change your policies, its worse than not doing anything. And i think the best thing for us americans to do is to look at our own country. Because here in this great country we permit, commit a lot of the crimes against women that i describe in this book. Ill just give you two examples very quickly if we have time, and that is two of the most revered institutions in america, the Great University system and the military. I teach at Emory University, and if you go to any university in this country, including the deeply religious universities, they have horrendous abuse of women on the campuses. Sexual abuse on the campuses is horrendous. And its not ever reported unless the women overcome the objection of the president of university and the deans who discourage any legalization of a rape. And a few boys on the campus that are inclined toward rape when they get to be a university student, they know they can do it and get away with it. Only 4 of the sexual assaults on the campuses are even reported, and very few of those ever result in punishment of the rapist. The same thing happens in our military. The statistics that were involved in 2012, 26,000 sexual abuses in the military, about 300 resulted in punishment of the rapist. Thats about 1 . So, you know, we dont even want to address that, and the congress, you know, recently tried to remove the control of Commanding Officers from deciding which one of those cases should be tried and failed. The Commanding Officers still have control. And the same thing applies on University Campuses where president s of the universities, no matter how enlightened they are, they dont want to bring discredit on their university, they dont want to allege or let the world know that under their leadership, sexual abuse still takes place. So we need to correct our own problems here at home before we look overseas. Does that mean that when were talking about our Foreign Policy and were dealing with a country like saudi arabia which does ores women they do. Women are not allowed to driver, they have to be covered up they cant vote. And they cant vote. Do we just overlook that . I mean, you were in the forefront of the Human Rights Movement early on and, obviously, this is a human rights issue throughout the world. So how do we deal with our allies who are, in fact, oppressing women . Is there a line that we draw where we say this is not acceptable . Well, in some cases i think the passage of a law through the United NationsSecurity Council can have teeth in it and really result in direct action being taken. And Angelina Jolie and the foreign minister of Great Britain are working as partners now to try to resolve the problem of rape this war zones. In war zones. And theyre being very effective because the foreign minister goes to meetings of the United NationsSecurity Council, and they get laws passed, you impose punishment on people where the crime is committed. The United States passed a law a few years ago referring to the International Violence against women act, avaw, and we didnt go all the way, but we did pass enough to require state department to assess every year the degree of slavery that exists still in the world. And slavery is much more prevalent now that it ever was during the 19th century. It amounts to about 32 billion a year. And the last report i read from the state department, which is the last one they issued, by the way, they estimate that 800,000 persons are sold acrosser and National Borders across interNational Borders every year into slavery. And 80 of those are girls being sold into sexual servitude. In the United States, they estimated this is the state department that 100,000 girls are sold into slavery in this coun