Moral Relativism

Every so often I bring this topic up on the boards because I never feel like I get an adequate response from people who talk about "absolutes" and stuff like that. I try to mix up what I am talking about so here is my latest installment.

Let's take the so-called "founding fathers" of the United States. If there are moral absolutes as such and there is something existing out in the world that we refer to as "morality" or "moral properties" aren't these people horribly immoral? I mean they denied rights to black people, to Indians, to women, and treated many people as second class individuals or even sub-human.
Aren't many of our own ancestors in the smae morally bankrupt position? I mean as recently as our parents our grandparents. Again, this assumes a timeless morality - objective morality out there in the world that exists regardless of time or anything else.

And if you deny this, aren;t you committed to something akin to saying that morality does not exist in the world, that it is something relative - say to time, or anything else?

I haven't read the other replies but one problem I see with the basic idea is the fact that the founding fathers were not monolithic in opinion. Jefferson tried to outlaw slavery, South Carolina said the wouldn't sign on and he had to fall back.

It's the problem with so many founding father arguments. Which founding father are we referencing because they had some very very different opinions on what needed to be done. The end result was a compromise among them.

So were the founding fathers moral? Some were and some weren't.