"If you accept the child-in-the-pond argument, not donating $3000 to malaria relief and being an assassin paid $3000 are morally equivalent actions. However, they aren’t equally blameworthy. You would have to be an unusually bad person to become an assassin, but a saint to donate all your money to charity. Becoming an assassin is doing much worse than you could be expected to do; giving all your money to charity, much better.

If you grow up in a liberal environment, it is not... praiseworthy to support gay marriage. Everyone supports gay marriage. It would be unusually homophobic of you not to support gay marriage. On the other hand, a person who grows up in an evangelical Christian environment might have to go through a lot of struggle and personal growth to conclude that homosexuality should not be illegal and LGB people should be treated with compassion and love, although homosexuality is still against the law of God. Although the former is better than the latter, the latter is more praiseworthy, because the person’s default was worse."