The genius of Shakespeare has Hamlet describing moral relativism in a few well-chosen words: “There is nothing either good or bad, But thinking makes it so.” In moral relativism,  nothing is absolutely good or bad. In moral relativism, there is only my good, or your good.  Good is not seen as rooted in human nature but varies with the times and the cultural milieu and the Zogby poll and who is in power.

On the other hand, our forefathers felt there were unalienable rights (or goods), among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, given to us by our creator.  Taking innocent life (murder) was always wrong. Enslaving human beings or maltreating them was always wrong. Hitler, a moral relativist, thought executing Jews, gypsies, Poles, the disabled, “useless eaters,” and various others was beneficial to the nation.  Rights came from the hand of the dictator, not from God.

The new pope, Benedict XVI, has lost no time in pointing out the danger of moral relativism.  It is getting so that it is hard to come up with anything that is still believed to be wrong by most people. We used to have right and wrong, truth and goodness.  Now we have political correctness and tolerance for everything and anything.

Child molestation is still generally considered bad though there are homosexual groups pressing for a lowering of the age of consent.  Another group will happily teach our children various ways in which they can pleasure each other sexually short of sexual intercourse.  They call it “outercourse” (and actually promote it as a kind of “abstinence!”) We know our kids are learning well  when we hear of the oral sex that is going on in grade school and on the school bus.

Another thing that is still considered a disorder is bulimia with its bingeing and purging. Besides the intended loss of weight, bulimia can cause irregular heartbeat, skewed electrolytes, constipation, cramping, absent menstrual periods, infertility, growth delay, cardiac arrhythmia, dizziness, tooth erosion, irritation of throat, esophagus, and stomach, and more, even leading to death.  It is still listed as an eating disorder in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (IV) (DSM).

Homosexual sex is a prime example of something that was once  wrong and lately has become right. Until 1973 the American Psychiatric Association labeled it a mental disorder. In the absence of any new evidence, in a sheerly political move, it has been re-classified as a normal sexual variation. This switch gets much publicity from gay rights groups.  Nevertheless in 1977 the journal Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality polled 2500 psychiatrists who answered 4 to 1 that “Homosexuality was usually a pathological adaptation as opposed to a normal variation.”

With unusual sexual practices becoming more and more prevalent, it is not odd that unusual diseases are becoming more and more common.  Besides epidemic AIDS, which nobody had heard of a generation ago, doctors now are seeing  gay bowel disease, anal fissures and incontinence, many varieties of rectal infections, escalating syphilis and gonorrhea, hepatitis A and C, Kaposi’s sarcoma, bacterial vaginosis, and other previously rare disorders.   HHV-8 (human herpes virus) is a disease found exclusively among male homosexuals.

It is not without reason that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has banned blood and sperm donations from sexually active gay donors.  The anus is, after all, an exit, not an entrance.  The rectal lining is designed to absorb materials from the colon,  unlike the vagina which has layers of squamous epithelium that are practically impervious.  Also promoting infection is the fact that semen contains an immunosuppressant, presumably so that the woman will not reject the sperm and the subsequent child from an unrelated male.  That same immunosuppressant, however, also prevents the rejection of invading bacteria.

The comparison between homosexuality and bulimia is especially apt since both deal with natural appetites that are not dealt with in the normal way, leading to bodily malfunction and disease.  Hunger and sexual desire in the natural order lead to health and life.    Hence bulimia is (for the time being) listed as a disorder in the DSM.   We would not be happy if our children were taught in school about healthy foods but at the same time were informed that there is a way they can eat all they want of any kind of food and still not get fat. Some who had not previously heard of bingeing and purging would be tempted to try that appealing option!

In a politically correct world where nothing is wrong, there may come a time when opinion will shift and it will then be considered judgmental and hateful to label bulimia as a bad thing just because it is unnatural and harmful to the individual. Bingeing and purging could then be taught in school as an acceptable variation in the same manner that homosexual sex is.

Internist John R. Diggs, Jr., writes: “When something is beneficial, such as exercise, good nutrition, or adequate sleep, it is my duty to recommend it. Likewise, when something is harmful, such as smoking, overeating, alcohol or drug abuse, and homosexual sex, it is my duty to discourage it.”

Could it be that we have been designed and hard-wired to function best in a certain way?  There is something to be said for studying the nature of a thing in order to decide what is good for it.  If you were to put wiper fluid in your car’s transmission and oil in the gasoline tank, that would be your privilege– but it wouldn’t work.  You might call us intolerant and bigoted if we tried to tell you that, but you would eventually learn – the hard way.

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For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.  Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error.  —  Romans 1:26-27