Atheists only vote please: Do absolute MORAL truths exist? Is Rape ALWAYS "wrong"?

[JuliaL]

You see how absurd this becomes when we try to apply this Absolute Stuff to other experiences that require conscious experience to give them meaning?

Quite

Having read the whole thread, I'm splitting the responses into two categories.
The first are from those who have tried to answer the question of the OP. These people also (as far as I can tell) agree that rape is repugnant and rapists are despicable yet do not claim that rape is absolutely wrong (though generally defend it being objectively bad.) They have had to defend their more clinical responses from-
The second who respond in a more visceral sense and strongly opine that rape is always and absolutely wrong because of the damage done to the participants, society or, well, because it just is.

Reconciling such emotional discord can be impossible. I'd like to think of myself in the first camp. Rape is at least subjectively universally bad. Subjective universality is the same as objective. That doesn't make it absolutely bad ('absolute' as independent of all actors, frames of reference or circumstances.) Objective and absolute are not the same thing. Rape still sucks bricks from the perspective of all remotely human humans. But I can't call it absolutely bad because I don't believe in the independent reality of Aristotelian absolutes, absolute moralities or even the logical absolutes. Please don't hurt me because I didn't say the right thing: that rape is absolutely, always wrong.