Why? For starters, on its face your premise is antithetical to the notions of Natural Law held by the Founders of this Nation. That alone renders it suspect in my mind. You sound like an Obamanite. Why should I believe you rather than them? Were they oblivious to this contradiction that you allege?
You deny that that Natural Law both exists in the hearts of men, and is immutable. If that is the case though, as I stated, if moral laws are not universal and unchanging then they reduce to relativistic preferences rather than prescriptive requirements. It's one or the other. The two premises are antithetical. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
You affirm the latter. Fine. What you are describing is called normative ethical relativism, or conventionalism, and it amounts to a view of morality that holds that you ought to do what society tells you to do. And since every society has their own viewpoint, morality is relative and changes over time. In short, there is no law above society.
There are logical corollaries to that premise, though. One is that it forecloses any ability to criticize another society's practices. If a society disdains "empathy for gays", to use your example, then I can just say, well, that is their society. Who are you to criticize another society's practices when the members of that society are obligated under your premise to follow their society's own relative social conventions?
The same goes for your other examples of slavery, marriage, and concubinages. If there is a polygamous, slave-holding society then you are in no position to criticize them either because they are merely obeying societal norms that are a function of time and changing social circumstances, whether it is slavery in Judea in 600 BC, in Classical Greece or Rome, or in Mississippi in 1860.
In fact, your conventionalism and relativism renders the idea of a moral reformer within a society a contradiction in terms. A moral reformer such as William Wilberforce who worked to bring about the end of the slave-trade in England would by definition be immoral because he was violating the rules imposed by societal norms of the time. There is obviously something very wrong with your premise.
...perhaps a good time to ask if social concepts rooted in the agrarian ages are relevant, much less representative of some “Natural Law.”
An animal without a transcendant standard has no warrant or justification for any notion of "good" in the first place, (good as compared to what?) much less the rejection of any "social concepts".
Cordially,
I think you have set your philosophical sights too low.
Abstract what is being said on both sides, subtract sex and sexual orientation, and address the strictly interpersonal that remains.
You or I or both of us can rant and rail all we want about straight sex and traditional marriage. The fact is that
birth control and the Internet — technology — have drastically changed the landscape of sexual outcomes
and with it sexual morals. Go to any high school
or college and take notes if you don’t believe. Go to
any church and take notes too. In the 19th century
it was considered immoral for women to show their ankles.
Are you throwing your lot in with the Victorians? Why
not, since morals should be absolute and the Victorians
certainly had their morals? We should not change, right?
As for me sounding like an Obamanite, check my FR signup date (Feb. 1998 or so). Are you alleging I am an Obama
troll and invented a time machine? You flatter me too much, sir (or madam).
I am saying that technology can have an effect on morals.
According to a scientific study in an earlier post,
humans were polygamous before 20,000 years ago. Obviously,
unless you have DNA evidence that refutes the study
and survives peer review to be published in a science
journal,
the prevailing morality of the time was that polygamy
was moral.
20,000 years ago we were homo sapiens, not animals,
as you imply (nice try though) hmm, maybe the real
problem is simply that sex makes you feel dirty.
The same founding fathers that wrote the D of I wrote the Constitution (more or less). We are still working
out the full implications of what they (and the writers
of the amendments) wrote. If one of the amendments implies
that a person has equal right to be regarded as in
a civil union with another person, then that explicit wording and arguments derived from it for example seems
to trump any implied imported natural law.
If you want to deny marriage between two men or two women
because a marriage must be between a man and a woman, how
do we define man and woman? What about people with XXY chromosomes, or XXYY? Hermaphrodites? etc. Are the rights
of these people protected under the Constitution? I think
they should be, else they are relegated to being subhuman. The restriction of civil union to those with normal chromosomes seems a distinction which forever forbids people with chromosomal abnormalities to lead lives that
other people would consider normal and full, that is,
including civil unions, purely by a matter in which
they have no say, that is, their inherited genes. Would
you consider that fair if it happened to you??? If
you answer no, allow me be the first to profess my
skepticism.
I am not here to make a case for absolute moral relativism.
But it sounds as if you have problems with dealing with reality. Face it, sexual morals have been pushed and
pulled by technology over the ages. I’m addressing
primarily marriage, not self defense or some other issue. You seem to
broaden the issue to all morality and change it and then
introduce red herrings by suggesting I am some sort
of generic relative morals advocate.
You do have a way with fancy sounding language though.
Since you evidently favor moral absolutism, I take it you would have no problem with the judicial penalty for adultery of stoning to death.
Anything less would seem to be be, by your standard, moral relativism, which you abhor.