On the appeal of relativism, the idea that there is no "true" knowledge and that evidence doesn't matter in the humanities, including anthropology: "How did so many scholars, from so many different fields, become so thoroughly convinced of a heady view in epistemology, especially one that is stubbornly rejected by the mainstream of professional philosophers? We cannot say that the appeal is intellectual: We cannot point to powerful arguments that make a strong case for the view. On the contrary, and as we will see in a moment, the intellectual case against relativism about knowledge is overwhelming. However, while it is not easy to see a strong intellectual case for relativism about knowledge, it is easy to see how it came to seem appealing to scholars who think of their scholarly project as a form of politics. In what way is the view politically appealing? If any claim to knowledge — even one coming from established science or direct observation — depends for its justification on certain contingent non-epistemic values, then any such claim can be dispatched if one rejects the nonepistemic values on which it allegedly depends. And that can seem to be a very powerful tool. Suppose you don’t like what biology is saying about a politically charged topic, e.g., sex. You don’t have to accept what biology has to say, no matter how “well-supported by the evidence” it happens to be, since its justification will also depend ineliminably on certain non-epistemic values, ones that you may happen not to share. You don’t like a thesis that evolutionary psychology is building a case for? You may ignore the whole field, dismissing it as deriving from misguided political values. And so on. I n general, a social constructionism about knowledge provides a blanket a priori guarantee that no one can force you to accept a thesis you don’t like on the alleged grounds that it has been shown to be true by the available evidence. For according to the view in question, there is simply no such thing."

A stance of relativism, that there is no "real" knowledge is essential to the philosophy of decolonization and dismantling eurocentric dominance: "Many colonial projects were justified by the claim that the colonizers were giving those they colonized the benefit of their superior knowledge and culture. For intellectuals who had turned decisively against colonialism, it was appealing to be able to resist the colonizers, not by detailed critique of their spurious claims to superiority, but rather by maintaining on general philosophical grounds that there is no such thing as superior knowledge, only different knowledges, each appropriate to its own setting, just as postmodernist relativism asserts."

Demonstrative of the muddled thinking of the anti-surrogacy crowd is the constantly repeated claim that surrogacy is like taking a puppy away from its mother. Surrogacy is like taking a puppy away from one mother, and giving it to another dog who accepts it as her puppy. This technique is called cross-fostering and it's been used for centuries for animal husbandry, conservation and research because it has minimal effects on the animal so long as its new parent cares for it.

If “parenting as if we were divorced” is the equality ideal you are aiming for, something may have gone wrong.