Way to take on a heavy issue!

This debate has been going on for awhile (at least since the Sophists and Socrates), but I've also noticed a particular strain of relativism recently.

I've found it interesting that many progressive folks, usually inclined toward social justice, also push a form of relativism to try and be open-minded. What you bring up is necessary -- what makes us pursue some sort of "good" if our morality simply equates to what we prefer.

This can get ugly quick - is it wrong for someone to kill my spouse? What about genocide? I think if you take relativism to its furthest extent, those things can't be "bad" just "dispreferred."

On the other side, I think the intention is often good. It is my opinion that post-modernism, as a response to modernism, wanted to emphasize the subjectivity of epistemology (and then the pendulum just got a bit out of control and decided that objectivity and ontology didn't exist either). Really, a lot of "relativists" are probably consequentialists.

All of that aside, my question for you:

If morality can not exists within relativism, does morality require a transcendent being in order for it to be objective? Essentially, what is needed to make a moral objective?

Thanks for writing this, Ryan.