Robert T. Miller is a law professor (at Villanova University) and a doctoral student in philosophy (at Columbia University). He has written a two-part essay (here and here) on misconceptions about moral relativism. The word “relativist” is often used the way “fascist,” “communist,” and “atheist” are used—not to describe something, but to condemn it. As Miller shows, this is unfortunate, for the word does have a descriptive meaning and does mark off a particular type of normative (or metaethical) theory. It might surprise you to learn that there are very few moral relativists among contemporary philosophers. Utilitarianism, for example, is not relativistic. It denies that rightness and wrongness are relative to cultures, societies, times, places, or individuals. What makes an act right, everywhere and always, is that it maximizes overall utility (where “utility” is variously understood as pleasure, happiness, welfare, or the satisfaction of preferences). If the opposite of relativism is absolutism, then both utilitarianism and natural-law theory are absolutistic. This doesn’t make them the same normative theory, obviously.  It just means that they have something in common.