ponder this when someone does something that merely "offends"

[acroyear]

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Solzhenitsyn the Social Conservative:

[...] human rights and human obligations are synonymous. We are obligated, by virtue of demanding our own liberty, to protect the liberty of others. That is our primary obligation, to respect the right of others to make choices that we don't like when those choices do not undermine our own equal right to do the same. Only when those choices are in conflict does "society" - i.e. the government - justly get involved.

Solzhenitsyn and Thomas would no doubt call this "moral relativism," but that is a hollow argument. It is, in fact, merely the assertion of a moral absolute that they disagree with, the assertion that it is immoral to deny others the right to self-determination within the boundaries of the equal rights of others.