Objective morality as a proper basic belief

[mordant]

My moral fact of a matter is not that people agree or that there is consensus (in fact there is -great- disagreement on what is or is not harmful).  My moral fact of the matter is that rape -is- harmful...not that people regard it as such.

Says who? Says society. On this particular issue there's widespread agreement that it's a harm. I don't think you can escape that if most people don't regard something as a harm they are not going to regard it as immoral.

Rape -isn't- harmful just because you say so, and wouldn't be less harmful if you said otherwise.

Which was exactly the point I made. Rape isn't wrong because I say so, or you say so, or an imagined god says so. It's wrong if it's harmful and that moral judgment has societal force if enough of society supports the notion.

Questions do, though, demand answers, how do you plan on providing a cogent answer without a sound proposition?  If someone asks you "why is rape bad" do you respond "because, like, people think it is, and that's their opinion, man".............?  Or do you try to help them see some moral fact of the matter, an X that makes the object itself, rape... bad, apart from any subjects appraisal -of- it?

I appeal to the principle of not violating someone else's free will and (non)consent, particularly when the harmful psychological effects to the person raped are so well understood and documented. So would most people, and so therefore society says it's wrong.

I guess what it comes down to (and what we agree on) is that which is harmful is immoral, but harm is somewhat subjective in many cases. Not so much in the case of rape, which is why everyone "sees" a "moral fact of the matter" (though participants in rape culture often do not; e.g, "no" doesn't really mean "no" by their lights). But generically, the case for harm may depend on context or be quite weak, in which case, the will of society to oppose or sanction it becomes dicey.

Beyond that, morality can and does change. There was a time for example when ice cream parlors were considered dens of iniquity and conducive to "white slavery", now they are places for innocent children to have fun. These are all based on judgments about harms, which ultimately are opinions and not always accurate. But it's good that morals change, based on new information. Not as objectively necessarily as scientific understanding changes, but the same general principle applies. This is another reason I don't see morality as objective.