A critique of moral relativism

Many people make this exact distinction. On what grounds?On the grounds of informed consent.They say that animals can't consent to sex, and that children can't give informed consent. Gay men (and women), like straight men and women, it is argued, can offer informed consent.Personally I think this is probably simplifying the issue, but it's an answer that people give. These people consider consent to be fundamental to their moral understanding. You don't. In a universe where there appears only to be relative morality, as I believe this one to be, there is no moral bedrock, and yet all of us with our differing conceptions of morality have to rub along together. Sometimes it flares up into violent disagreement, but where there is a sufficiently strong state and legal system, the state will impose its moral framework. In the real world, those in positions of power have a disproportionate ability to impose their morality - but that doesn't stop other moral outlooks from existing.This has all been a very long winded way of saying I can't begin to understand your position. I'm trying to picture what you think would happen if there wasn't God's moral framework holding us all together. I don't believe in this framework, and I believe what we see is consistent with what you'd expect from a world without such a framework.

You say that the issue isn't consent per se; I think this is untrue in some circumstances. I think there are some people for whom their interactions with other life forms are principally guided by the idea of informed consent.By the way, I'm not saying that I'm one of them.I was answering nem's question, namely, how might someone find having sex with men acceptable and yet having sex with children unacceptable. He posed it in such a way as to suggest that this was a difficult question to address. I don't think it is, because I think that in our culture, sex between adults and children is much more likely to be harmful to the children than sex between adults will be to those adults. I was merely responding with the first suggestion that came to mind - namely the idea of informed consent - however, there are many other moral schemes through which these two beliefs could entertained by one person simultaneously.As I said, I don't actually agree with the "informed consent" deal in an uncritical way. Determining the magical moment when any child passes into a state of being able to make an adult decision is patently impossible, and so we are left with very imprecise legal definitions of childhood and the minimum required mental capacity needed to be considered an informed chooser.However, that isn't to say that many people don't use the idea of informed consent in many of their dealings with other living things.