Religion and Political Ideology

At this stage we need to step back, to reflect on the achievements and failures of this ‘liberal hour’. For in its contradictory course it revealed all the strengths and weaknesses of the liberal approach to sexuality. On its positive side were a series of important gains. Reform was achieved, through the pragmatic manoeuvres of the Parliamentary liberals and their extra-Parliamentary auxiliaries. There was an important shift towards privatization of decision-making, towards a legal acceptance of moral pluralism. But its weaknesses flowed from its strengths. Reforms were gained through a programme of necessary compromises; frequently they were piecemeal and often unsatisfactory in nature and implied no positive endorsement of radically different moral stances. Indeed, as Professor Richards has written, ‘A feature of the Parliamentary debates on this subject is that the fundamental moral issue was consistently avoided’. As a result they neither satisfied radicals nor appeased moral conservatives, and not surprisingly, morality became more than ever a battleground in the succeeding decade.