 This demand of the consequentialist is backed by a particular and familiar understanding of the nature of moral demands. Morality, it seems to many people, requires us to be impartial between persons, not giving special consideration to anyone merely on the basis of irrelevant features. Deviations from such impartiality often appear morally odious, as the world’s history of racism, sexism, religious bigotry, homophobia, etc. demonstrate all too clearly. But special obligations are a deviation from impartiality, as they offer support to our being partial to those persons who stand in special relationships to us. A defense of special obligations, then, requires a defense of morality as involving both partial and impartial demands (see Cottingham). Instead of deviating from an impartial conception of morality, some philosophers have instead claimed that special relationships such as friendship generate their own, non-moral reasons of partiality (Cocking and Kennett), while others have followed Samuel Scheffler (1994) in claiming that we have permissions or agent-centered prerogatives that allow us to deviate from impartial moral demands in certain contexts. And, of course, another option is to deny that we are justified in acting partially even in contexts in which such partiality is generally accepted. (See, for example, Gomberg, for a defense of the claim that partiality to compatriots is no more justified than is racism.)