Afghans say enslaving women is okay in their culture. And according to your criteria, they are right as culture defines morality. Where do universal human rights come from - can't be cultural. What are they?
Homosexuality was once regarded as a perversion but is now widely accepted as an acceptable lifestyle because society says it is "okay", they don't want to interfere with the private lives of others.
You have just stumbled into the "is-ought fallacy." Just because certain moral behavior is observed - that says that doesn't require that people OUGHT to be doing it. A conclusion about the nature of morality cannot be made from mere observation of different cultural moral practices. Morality is not judged empirically.
Homosexuality was once regarded as a perversion but is now widely accepted as an acceptable lifestyle because society says it is "okay", they don't want to interfere with the private lives of others.Though I have to agree with you in this specific context, I think there has to be a place for Is -> Ought. Otherwise Ought is arbitrary.You have just stumbled into the "is-ought fallacy." Just because certain moral behavior is observed - that says that doesn't require that people OUGHT to be doing it. A conclusion about the nature of morality cannot be made from mere observation of different cultural moral practices. Morality is not judged empirically.
Morality is a set of basic principles governing our behavior in order to maximize our eudaimonia - our flourishing as living human beings, with the kind of life that's appropriate to our nature as human beings. Therefore, one must determine as best she can just what constitutes our nature. A moral code that led to poverty, death, destruction, & degradation, would have no legitimate claim to anyone's allegiance. (Unless they know of no alternative! Perhaps Sparta was a "better" society than Athens, for its time. The Nazis, Commies & the Taliban, OTOH, had/have no excuse.)
So in a fundamental sense, it seems clear that Is must lead to Ought. In practice I think it clearly does.
FWIW, here's how Rand sees it:
It is only an ultimate goal, an end in itself, that makes the existence of values possible. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action. Epistemologically, the concept of "value" is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of "life". To speak of "value" as apart from "life" is worse than a contradiction in terms. "It is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible."In answer to those philosophers who claim that no relation can be established between ultimate ends or values and the facts of reality, let me stress that the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do. So much for the issue of the relation between "is" and "ought."
- Virtue of Selfishness