Question: If they’re not arguing about the biblical status or harm status of homosexuality, and they acknowledge that they mean entirely different things by the label “immoral,” what are they actually contesting when they argue the proper denotation of that label?
They could be contesting either:
Which definition fits common usage of the term “immoral”, which can be investigated empirically (see the whole “experimental philosophy” project)
Which definition should be the common usage one (i.e. in this case, it boils down to metaethics).
To take a simpler topic, two people could be disagreeing about a point of grammar (say “who” vs. “whom”), and the disagreement could be either about the way most people speak, or about which way would make the language clearer and more efficient.
Or you could have a disagreement about whether a dolphin should be categorized as a fish or a mammal—and even if you’re in a country where in common usage a dolphin is called a fish, you could still argue that it makes more sense to categorize it as a mammal, or as a third, separate category.
They could be contesting either:
Which definition fits common usage of the term “immoral”, which can be investigated empirically (see the whole “experimental philosophy” project)
Which definition should be the common usage one (i.e. in this case, it boils down to metaethics).
To take a simpler topic, two people could be disagreeing about a point of grammar (say “who” vs. “whom”), and the disagreement could be either about the way most people speak, or about which way would make the language clearer and more efficient.
Or you could have a disagreement about whether a dolphin should be categorized as a fish or a mammal—and even if you’re in a country where in common usage a dolphin is called a fish, you could still argue that it makes more sense to categorize it as a mammal, or as a third, separate category.