My friend Stephen:

Having gotten to be good friends through this board and through our back channel communications, I have no doubt that the escalator goes up for you.

Maybe it's the Presbyterian in me, but I gotta try one more time to beat my head on the Whitlock wall!

Was the moral wrong and just not recognized or seen as wrong by our ancestors. Or was the moral always the same and our human understanding of the unchanging moral changing. Just because something is codified and accepted by generational standards does not equate to moral. If slavery is immoral today, it was immoral yersterday. To do otherwise is to accept an immoral act. One can be forgiven for committing an immoral act according to the knowledge of the day. But it does not lessen the immorality of it.
And I still am, the son of slaveowners on at least five sides.

I think I'll start a new board. the TCBRDP board. Otherwise known as The Two Country Bumpkin Rubes Discuss Philosophy.

Your friend and compatriot.

John