The opening post discusses morality, the level of rightness and wrongness of infidelity and concludes that cheating on a partner is nothing more than any other deceitful lie, and, due to the relativism of morality, it certainly doesn’t rank high on the scale of badness, and since some forms of lying are good, i.e., white lies, infidelity isn’t really bad because can “you be so absolute about lying” – that it is bad?
This is like agreeing with both extremes of an argument: use relativism in the overall spectrum of good and bad to show how lying isn’t nearly as bad as, say, murder, and it is such a lesser offense it is hardly an offense at all, but ignore relativism when it comes to talking about the good and bad within the spectrum of lying itself.
And because action A (e.g., murder) is worse than action B (e.g., lying), it does not mean action B is now no longer bad. It’s still bad, but perhaps lying is not as bad as many other things, like examples of active badness. Lying is a passive bad in the sense that it does not directly inflict physical pain, so one could argue that punching someone is worse than lying to them. That being said, though, many people have experienced lies that harm them emotionally and far worse than any punch might inflict due to the longevity and mental and emotion backlash of said pain. So a lie can be equal to or worse than physically lashing out at someone.
Now it comes down to the notion that if no negative consequences arise from cheating, that is, unwanted pregnancies, contraction of STDs, or being caught, then there is no harm and the supposed bad action is in fact not bad because it produces no bad result. But is that how morality is judged: something is only bad if other people know you are committing the bad? No. There are universal notions of good and bad and these universals are not dependent upon if anyone knows they are being committed or not. Morality is not based on if other people know someone acts morally or immorally, it is about what is and is not morally responsible.
A persons reputation determines how they are viewed, morally responsible or not, but it does not always represent the reality, and if someone acts immorally but is not known for it, that does not negate the fact that said person is immoral.
[FONT="]And an ultimate marital sin cannot exist due to the subjective and relativistic nature involved in the labeling process. The worse form of marital sin can vary widely, for it could be seen as inflicting physical harm, mental and emotional terrorism, physical infidelity, or emotional infidelity. And none of the aforementioned categories can be categorically labeled the worse because there are degrees of badness within each and these degrees are all debatable.
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