Ethical Sex — with Dr Anthony McCarthy

0:00Well, today I'd like to welcome to UK Column, Dr Anthony McCarthy. Now Anthony is a director and founder of the BIOS Centre in London. He's a visiting scholar in moral philosophy at the Theological Institute in Tramo, Austria. He holds degrees in philosophy from King's College London, University College London, and the University of Surrey. He's the author of Ethical Sex, Sexual Choices and their Nature and Meaning. And Anthony is joining us today to speak in a personal capacity. So welcome Anthony. It's really great to have you here today and I just want to ask you what prompted you to write Ethical Sex? Well, thank you very much for having me. So I had quite an interest

1:01in philosophy from a young age and a particularly moral philosophy and so I went to study that subject. And I found that moral philosophy was very interesting but that the treatments of a very important area of life, namely our sexual nature, received very little serious attention within philosophy. So you had discussions in moral philosophy about all sorts of areas of life and political questions as well concerning property. And there was a feeling that people would have a general moral philosophical theory and that there was no special area of sex as it were. So sex was actually treated, I think, in a very trivial way. It was treated as though it wasn't a special area of life. And this seemed to me to conflict very much with our own experience of this area of life, but also it's important in society, if one thinks. So I mean one thing I thought, for example,

2:06rape is a particularly horrendous type of crime. But if you understand sexual Essex only in terms of consent, basically consent is the only thing that matters. It's actually quite hard to understand why that particular violation of consent seems to be so devastating, to do such moral damage to people. So that was sort of where I began, is with a frustration. And I mean a very good example. There was a first year book called Practical Ethics by Peter Singer and Peter Singer is a very extreme character. He's known for animal rights, but also he has endorsed in phantoside. He's a very hard line utilitarian, if you like. And at the beginning of that book he says that sexes have no importance at all for ethics that any more than traffic regulations. So you just have a general set of rules. Yeah. You have a general set of rules for traffic,

3:10and sex is just like that. He has no special nature. And I thought, well, if you look at all of literature, the idea of a virtue connected with the sexual morality, chastity, ideas about marriage, the seriousness of adultery say the importance of marriage, what the meaning of marriage might be. If you think about those questions seriously, you realize it's nothing like that at all. So you wonder why in philosophy it is so neglected. And I think downstream from that, as it were, you have big changes in the culture. And people don't really know how to address these questions, you know, because they keep coming back to, well, is it consensual? Which is, of course, that's a very important consideration. There's a lot to be said about the nature of consent. But is that all there is to the sexual morality? Whether it's something is consensual or not? It seems to be not. Quite right. And so really, we're looking at the whole sexual revolution.

4:12You know, it's obviously reshaped and possibly distorted the meaning of sex in a lot of ways. Do you feel that might be the case? Yes, very much so. And I think actually we see a lot of confusions arising from what I would take to be a misunderstanding about the nature of sex. So, I mean, the most radical sort of change comes about with the promotion of contraceptive pill, obviously, has very big social consequences because it gets people very used to the idea that sex there's nothing essentially about sex, which relates to procreation to the community. As women's liberation as well, women's liberation, where in a way, this promise of career freedom

5:15and sexual freedom and independent, financial independence, which, you know, all sounds very good on the outside. But, you know, actually, has it made women happier? And I know a lot of women at the moment who have, you know, it's led to loneliness and insecurity, actually. So, yeah, that is a whole new area that I think people have overlooked the fact that has it made us happier? It hasn't made many happier either. So, yeah, I mean, do you agree with that? Well, it certainly, I mean, yeah, it certainly hasn't been a utopia put it that way. And I think there are very serious costs. So, there's a question. Do you... So, it's sold in terms of an increase in your autonomy, an increase in your range of choices. And with an increase in your range of choices, you know, that is taken to be necessarily a good thing. Okay. Now, this is a general point about choices, actually. An extension of your range of choices within a society creates all sorts of social pressures

6:23that you perhaps didn't anticipate. So, one consequence you might say, and this is sort of connected with the sexual revolution, is something like abortion. So, someone says that is now a choice that can be legitimate. The law will support you. The medical profession will provide for this operation for what had once been seen as something seriously wrong or problematic. Okay. So, you now have a choice you didn't previously have. Well, an effect of having that choice, aside from the moral question about abortion and whether the taking of an unborn life is more or even wrong, is that a woman who is now pregnant starts to become viewed differently. You don't think, well, she's pregnant, so she's going to have a baby, so we have to think about

7:23how to help her. You might think, well, why the hell doesn't she have an abortion? That's an option for her now. So, suddenly, there's a social pressure that wasn't there before because something was seen as not an option. So, it's not a straightforward thing. So, it's normalised. Is that what you're saying? It's been normalised. I think it's the value life, yeah. Well, the baseline assumption changes. So, the baseline assumption before was this woman is pregnant and then, hopefully, you think, well, if she's going to have a child, she will need some support. What is the best way of supporting that? But if you say, ah, but now she has a choice to end that pregnancy and you end the pregnancy by destroying the unborn child, well, then she's in a very different position, socially, because now people look upon a pregnant woman and they might think, well, she shouldn't be pregnant or why should anyone pay for this? Therefore, she should go back and destroy the child. And I think this sort of thinking about autonomy is very dangerous.

8:27We also see this with end-of-life debates, actually, that well, why are you choosing to stay alive when you could keep yourself, okay? Exactly. If the law changes, it changes the social pressure and the expectations upon people and those things, I think, are underestimated. And also, we've got this demographic collapse in population in the Western world, where this is really having quite a devastating effect. Birth rates are falling, marriage is collapsing, and many women do end up childless because not by choice, but because of circumstances, as you've just illustrated. So what does this reveal about our culture's moral direction at the moment? Well, I think by, as it were, removing the reference of the association between sexual activity and the coming to be of children, you remove an awful lot

9:31of institutions that traditionally did surround that. So the first thing you do, in a sense, is you weaken the very idea of marriage. So if you think that marriage is about a man and a woman engaged in a lifelong partnership for the rearing of children, of course not every marriage will have children, but the couple are engaged in a procreative and a unitive kind of act, which is the kind of act that can bring children to be. If you completely and radically separate the idea of sexual activity from the coming to be of new life children, you actually radically change the very nature of marriage because marriage no longer, it's no longer obvious why marriage should be, for example, lifelong. That is very bad, or indeed, if we're going to push it to the extreme, or indeed between two people of opposite sex, because there is no essential relation

10:37of that institution to the child, whereas traditionally the idea was, marriage is built around a particular kind of act, namely a sexual act which is open to the possibility of new life of children. So the institution, as it were, is built around that understanding, and that's very, as it were, child-centric. So the idea is that children are parents are full of the child, as it were, they are striving towards the child, and they, in some sense, serve that child. Now that gets reversed if you change the nature of the institution and the act, that's what, if you change the nature of the act, it somehow loses its rational to some extent, because you're now engaged in what's called sexual activity of some kind, which has no relation to children, and therefore no relation to a traditional view of marriage at all. So why should it be contained within that? Do you see that also, I mean, can it not, within the family framework,

11:43can it not just be also an act that brings people closer and develops a deeper understanding of each human being, you know, the couple? So it's, although the reason, the framework is the family and the children, but it is also, hopefully, deepening the connection between the two people that create that framework, would you agree? Well, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I certainly wouldn't separate them. I mean, someone who's overly focused on children and forgets about the union of the couple is doing something very wrong. In fact, both, there are two ways of going wrong, it seems to me. One is over-focus on childbirth and just having children and neglecting the radical friendship, as it were, the union. The other is to only focus on that and to deliberately exclude from that the possibility of children and changing the nature of the sexual act so that it doesn't do that. So, I mean, the idea of marriage was that you have this

12:45lifelong commitment where you really understand the other person is irreplaceable, in some sense. This brings us on to the question of then, if we look at the whole LGBTQ expansion and the trans movement, that in a way, this is really a lot of young people are getting involved in that. What deeper philosophical or cultural forces are driving that in respect to what we've just talked about? Well, I think if you change the nature of the sexual act as the sort of sexual revolution tended to do, it changed the societal understanding of it. Then, very quickly, it becomes reasonable for someone to say, well, if you can engage in sexual acts for emotional reasons, completely unrelated to marriage, completely unrelated to the idea of building a life around these acts and children and the marital union, everything that goes with it, then why do you,

13:50for example, condemn homosexual activity, say, or other forms of sexual activity, which had traditionally been rather condemned, and sometimes in rather brutal ways, has to be said. Well, in a sense, they have a point because if you have changed the nature of the sexual act, and if you say that that act now no longer has any sort of marital meaning in itself, it's merely a matter of choice, then why not engage in other kinds of sexual activities, or indeed change the nature of marriage, which we've seen with the legislation on the same-sex marriage, which completely changes the meaning of marriage. It is now no longer has that traditional meaning. Exactly. So, I think in a sense, you've these things as it were follow logically, and they might take a while for society to develop, but as we've seen, once you've changed this, you do get, and you do get these sort of changes in

14:55the LGBT area, but you also get confusions now about the very idea of gender, because in a sense, what you've done is you've, by changing the nature of the sexual act, you've changed the fundamental idea of masculinity and femininity, male and female, and as our bodies as having a kind of meaning, I would say a marital meaning. So, once you've done that, you don't really, when it comes to the LGBT area, you can't really, it seems to me, on grounds of traditional reality, if you yourself have agreed with the sexual revolution, saying, I mean, I do think the whole thing about sexual identity, if you can, if you can somehow separate the biology from the identity, I feel that this, again, it serves a political agenda, where at the moment we're getting

16:00this whole identity issue, because if you destroy someone's identity, which, basically, you are, you're destroying their sexual identity and replacing it with something else, and if you can do that, it kind of is very easy, then, to morph into the whole transhumanism agenda, which I don't necessarily want to touch on too much, but also we're talking about, you know, digital identity, you know, if it's all kind of wrapped up with understanding who you really are, and if you're changing, you know, the biology that you have, there's a danger of it being almost controlled into a different way, like when you look at the whole internet of bodies and the digital twins that they're creating, so it does serve a purpose in the broader, if you like, technocratic sense, yeah. I just, I think that a lot of it stems from a downgrading of the idea that our sexual

17:03activity has a certain kind of meaning. It relates to an institutionable marriage, it could be argued. Now, if you don't take that, and you say, well, no, I'm a creature, and I have autonomous choices, and I get to decide my identity, and I get to make myself and do all these things. Okay, but then you're denying that the child bodies have a particular kind of meaning, so are you then going to impose a meaning on things that people had thought had a meaning in themselves, or the marriage had a particular kind of meaning, or something like that? And of course, as soon as you do that, as soon as you degrade the idea that you're malice or female or this, has a certain kind of meaning, which relates to biology, and has many other meanings, but of course, biology is fundamental. Once you do that, then of course you get people creating their own identity, sometimes in opposition to their, to their biological nature. And that, I think that does, I mean,

18:07if people ground their identities in something that is unrelated to their, what how am I supposed to, the meaning of their bodies, the meaning of being male or female as they relate to each other, if you define something yourself outside of that, or in opposition to that, then it seems to me that that's a very fragile basis for an identity, because it's not actually grounded in certain things that we traditionally have thought were required. And if that's the case, then politically, it seems to me that, yeah, if somebody has a great deal of power, they don't want people to have strong grounded identities, which they find, for example, in a family. They become much more atomised, they become much more fragmentary. And the family framework does actually give that, that, you know, that, that security and, and stable basis for developing your own identity

19:10and your own opinions and, and everything. So in a way, it does, it could, I mean, we've seen the destruction of the family unit. And that does serve a bigger agenda if, if, if it is all about control, which we're seeing more and more these days. Now, do you think men have been culturally encouraged to avoid responsibility? Because this is what I'm seeing, you know, family, you know, and adulthood. Are we raising boys who are disconnected from fatherhood as a sort of a moral calling in a sense? Well, it certainly seems that way. I mean, I think it's, you know, there are many causes for these things. I mean, I certainly don't think, you know, the sort of economics of our society is particularly supportive of the family. Is the dependency, isn't it? It's creating this dependency on benefits, which allows for the men to take no responsibility and the women to, to, to live alone and, and receive benefits in this dependence, sort of cycle,

20:16which isn't good for anyone, really. And, and also, you've got fatherless, fatherless sons and daughters, but sons, particularly, I think, you know, that we're, we've, we've got all these boys that have no fathers and no role models, so that can't be very healthy for them either. Well, I think if you, if you weaken the fundamental ideal of marriage, the fundamental institution, then, then clearly you lose a great deal of foundation and grounding in the, in the bringing up of people, that can be threatened in many, many various ways. Certainly, you know, the welfare culture can, can be part of that, but also a culture which basically doesn't support families either. Yeah. Highly consumerist culture, which is constantly sort of, you know, actually a very revolutionary way, constantly undermining in the name of profits or whatever, undermining all sorts of social structures that, that deed favor the family, because the family, in a sense, is a

21:19is a world in itself, and, and there are certain people who don't want worlds in themselves, because those worlds in themselves, as it were, are inherently pre-political, and they're actually, you know, aware, I, I would argue, we can discover some of our greatest freedoms. Now, if you break that and you weaken that, and you do it in the name of freedom, and the name of choice, well, you can end up with these expected or unexpected consequences, depending on who's thinking about it, where you have much weaker individuals who see themselves as consumers as choice makers and things like that, be rift of the frameworks. Now, that can be very damaging to men, you know, who, who now I think, well, why the hell should I take a lifelong oath to another human being or a woman, but also if, you know, with maybe radical feminism or something, you have women

22:20who regard these things as, you know, outdated or sexist or whatever, well, then, of course, then, then that will change how women view these things. I think a lot of people, men and women, are, are very frustrated by this. Yeah. They do not think that the results have been particularly good, that the costs of this so-called increase in autonomy have been very high, and a lot of people feel more enslaved than ever, ironically. So, you have this supposed increase in autonomy, and yet people feel more and more enslaved. And actually, you know, sex is a very powerful force within our lives, and that can be monetized through pornography, which is a kind of ultimate form of slavery. Yeah, I would say, get on to pornography, because, I mean, that's an extreme case. Yeah. And just one thing about identity, I mean, to me, someone might say, well, I have this sexual identity or whatever. That's actually quite a strange thing in a way, if you think about it. I mean, why do you define your core, one of the most important

23:26things about you is who you are attracted to, as opposed to what kind of being you are, you know, male or female or something like that. But I do think it's interesting that one of the strongest forms of identity, people tend to identify is with this sexual identity. So, that may be suggests that there's something very important here about who you are, that this is not just, you know, what kitchens you happen to like or what football team you happen to prefer. There's something about those kinds of desires which relate to something beyond yourself. And so, in a way, I understand people who want to identify in a particular way around the sexual things. My question would be, in what sense does that have a deep meaning? I can understand it in terms of marriage or being a husband or being a father or a wife or mother. Those seem to be very fundamental kinds of roles within life. But having a sexual predilection for X, I don't really see how that's a fundamental role within

24:30life, with which to identify it. And I should that be the most important thing about you, doesn't seem to me obvious. Yeah. And with pornography, I mean, you know, it seems that we men and women are affected by this because it takes the ability to form, you know, meaningful relationships away in some ways because it's all about, it's all about the sex and the drive for sex without, you know, I feel that it's debasing the whole fundamental act, isn't it really? Sure. And a lot of boys and women are looking at, you know, it's not just men, it's women are looking at pornography. And it's becoming addictive and it's becoming almost like a benchmark of how women are treated. Would you agree? Yeah. Yeah. And it's also, it's a dangerous fantasy. Yeah. And the danger of fantasy is that it pretends to be real and then it starts to affect what you think. So you don't, you cease to see real men and real women of the kind you might

25:35form a relationship with. And also, I mean, it's also completely sterile. It's sort of skimming pleasure of something, in this case, something unreal without, but you're engaging your section of motions. Now, I think those emotions actually ideally relate to another human being who you love and nurture and cherish. Yeah. In a sense, that's why they're there. Absolutely. And of course, you can distort them. And of course, I mean, the irony is that, you know, almost, you know, an awful lot of people, ordinary people, even if they use belong for engagement with it, they don't actually think it's good. So you hear this thing, well, lots of people use it. Well, lots of people lie, lots of people do also, we all do all sorts of things that we maybe shouldn't do. But that doesn't mean we think that that's a good thing. So this pretends that this is a normal, good thing. And I think it's very striking that a lot of people who complain about, more, changes in society, more degradation, they don't want to do anything

26:38to tackle this particular industry, which seems to me almost entirely harmful industry, which is run by people who basically want to enslave people. I mean, within the industry itself, if you can call it industry, are horribly mistreated people who are often extremely depressed states. And that's sort of swept under the carpet. So I think, I think actually a serious person who wanted to resist certain kinds of tyranny should be attacking also those kinds of tyrannies, which are horribly enslaving and damaging to society at large. When you look at pornography and how easily it could be regulated, particularly youngsters are looking at it, there should be some way of preventing children from actually accessing pornography. If they don't have parents that are safeguarding, then they will have access to it.

27:38And what's interesting is, just only this week, the government have their remedy against what they say is violence towards women and girls, is to have boys of 11 years plus to have lessons in workshops within school to address their deep-seated misogyny. So how does this an 11-year-old boy is then put into a lesson or a workshop in school and told that he's got deep-seated misogyny and that he's bad and that they need to learn how to respect women, which I mean, how do you think that will influence a young boy being told that he's bad? He may not have even thought about misogyny, but he's being told, because obviously this is their way of addressing it. And I personally think that you've got all these influences, like Andrew Tate,

28:39who's been influencing young boys into this kind of misogyny. Why isn't something done about that and pornography rather than giving them these poor children some sort of guilt trip about being bad? Because it's not going to work. I mean, it's outrageous, I think, particularly at very young age, people are very impressionable and often you're putting ideas in their head that they never had. But oh, I mean, the hypocrisy is incredible because you have a government that doesn't really want to put anything about, say, for example, pornography or, you know, sorts of problems associated with it. But at the same time, it's going to try and indoctrinate 11-year-olds with a kind of almost a social theory that somehow you have an inherent tendency to treating women appallingly. Well, okay, here's an industry that treats women appallingly and degrades everybody involved and is extremely addictive and horrible. And you're doing nothing

29:42about that. That's just, you know, ignored. And then you're going to get into schools and you're going to find rewrites, sort of rewired people. And I think it's very damaging generally to have this idea that somehow, you know, you are a wicked person who needs to be re-engineered when you're talking about an 11-year-old. You know, what is it that you're offering an 11-year-old? You're offering some sort of condemnation of something that is hugely turbocharged by an industry that you're not going to do anything about. Exactly. So what needs to be recovered for a gen, you know, a genuine moral, sort of almost a renewal in moral ethics? What, in what, how would you see that? What would that look like in schools, for instance, or anywhere in society? Well, I think, I mean, one thing that is always sort of worrying in schools is there is sometimes

30:43a sort of mistrust of parents. So there's the idea that, well, you can't trust parents, the school knows best. But actually, the child's primary education is within the family. Of course, there are families that are not great, very fragmented or bad parenting, whatever. But the presumption should be that the school is, as it were, in low-code parenthesis, but it's doing something on behalf of parents, as it were, when they're at school, not that the school, you know, informed by a state, wanting to push out certain messages, is somehow the primary care and influence for children. And these stupid parents need to be sort of retrained or reorganized. Generally speaking, parents are the, look out for the best interest in their children. Of course, there are failures and there are people, but I'm talking

31:46generally that that is the more suitable area whereby the child is understood as having come from a father and a mother, having a particular identity within a home. So I think, well, I think strengthening the idea of marriage is a very good place to start to say that this is actually, you know, if you're a parent, you have to some extent living for serving your own children. And that's a natural instinct that many people have, but it's often undermined or threatened by an extremely consumerist society, a way of thinking and talking that is ultimately sort of radical or even hyper individualist. Okay, I would say that a fundamental pre-political building block is the family where, and it's through the family that you discover the importance of persons, the irreplaceability of persons, but also bonds, your connection to heritage and

32:47history, also your responsibility for the future. If you have a sort of hyper individualized society, which is encouraged, I think, in part by the kind of economical arrangements that we have, and by the idea that basically if someone desires something, it's good, regardless, unless it can be shown to prove very obvious sort of certain kinds of harms, it's fine, it's good. If that's your sort of presumption behind everything, it seems to me you're not going to get a particularly ethical society, because actually that's a very unrealistic way of viewing any society. Particularly in the West as well, because there are other cultures, other religions that do value family, I mean most of them actually, you look at Islam, they're very family-oriented, so Hindus, Judaism, they all seem to have a very very strong sense of

33:49family. What happened to Christianity? Because it seems to have just lost its moral compass at the moment, and how do we get back to that? Because Christianity is supposed to be the Western religion, and we've gone so far away from it, so how can that be reclaimed in some way? Well, I think you might sort of say in what's called West, you have a kind of Christian heresy, which is called liberalism, and liberalism becomes very powerful, it's associated with sort of economic production at certain points as well, and certain ideas about freedom, and these are very powerful and in many ways very attractive ideas. The problem is that then becomes unmoored from the Christian culture from which it arose, and that unmooring is

34:53very dangerous because then liberalism, as it were, becomes almost like an asset, it starts dissolving the very structures and foundations that gave rise to it, so I think it's a particular problem in the West that we think of things in terms of what you might say an over emphasis on an idea about autonomy removed from the kind of moral framework that made sense of that, and actually I would say almost like a worship of man, so you end up with this idea that man is somehow this godlike creature, or if man desires something it's good in itself, and all I need to do is say to us, and then you just have a few restrictions here and therefore really things that are kind of obviously problematic, but there's no deeper understanding of what man is for or anything like that, how we get back to that, well I think, I mean, encouraging scientists, I think people are exhausted by it, a lot of people are exhausted of what's called

35:57liberalism, because they think it does seem to have destroyed, for instance, to some extent the institution of marriage, it doesn't actually seem to be bringing home the kind of economic results and prosperity that perhaps once it did, and more and more people are reacting against it. Now, people can react against liberalism in all sorts of ways, some of them can be very dangerous, if not worse, you know, sort of extreme collectivism, for example, or a vicious reaction, but in fact true liberty I think has to be grounded in a sort of return to certain kind of ethical understanding of our role, and at a very basic level that starts within the idea of the family I would say, so being a man is understood for many people, obviously not for everybody, but in terms of what it means to be a father, what it means to have a lifelong institution, that treats every new human being as somehow irreplaceable, not just a consumer choice,

37:02a move away from a sort of view of seeing everything as transactional, everything as replaceable. Yes. Now, traditionally religion strengthen that role, and many people are not religious, but I think that the truths about the family can be understood by someone who, without a religious faith, just as easily, and many, many people are coming through that. So I think in a way, the exhaustion of our society and the creeping sort of totalitarianism that comes with it, if you have an ultra-individualist society, what you find pretty soon is the government actually in those circumstances can push through a lot more repressive measures than they could when there were stronger communities and stronger families. So I think, you know, focusing on your community, on your family is one way in which you can

38:05start to resist some of these measures. I mean, it is interesting because actually, just to endorse what you've said, just lately, I've been talking to a lot of younger people, I mean, I'm talking people late teens early to mid-twenties, and they are almost rebelling against this whole, I suppose, destruction of the moral fiber of our society. You know, all of that has been quite celebrated, I think, with women's liberation and the destruction of the family unit. And they're saying, well, we want to get married early and have children. And there is a bit of a turnaround. Do you think that because it's been pushed so far in this exhaustion that you're speaking of, has actually pushed people to actually wake up and see what's really going on? Yes, I do. I mean, I think, I mean, it's partly because

39:07people get that it's just not plausible to carry on like this, as it were. Whereas maybe it was, you know, in the 60s, there was a very different atmosphere where things seemed possible, and there were these utopian visions, and this would somehow lead to, but the results are in, you know, the statistics have been a disaster, and actually, very many social changes, I say, this will be fine, this will lead to greater liberation. People at the time said, well, actually, what it will lead to is the kind of things we see now, and that's exactly what's happened. I mean, reality, as it were, will not be mocked. So, you know, you can live in this fantasy world, but it's now, it's very obviously a fantasy that if you have mass sexual liberation, you have a utopia. You know, there are the costs all around us, and a lot of people, I mean, you hear this sort of people talk about boomers. There's a kind of resentment, I think, amongst young people, that a particular generation, elements of a particular generation, bequeath them a huge amount more in

40:08security, because all of these things have other effects, including economic effects. So, so, okay, great. We've had sexual liberation, and now you can't buy a house, you know, great. You know, exactly. You have all these things that you expected that you might have, and instead of which they've been sold down a river. And actually, I think there's a story to be told about what you might call the left, or has shifted from economic concerns, which many of which I think had some legitimacy, to, as it were, sexual liberation. So, you end up with a sort of split within the left, where it's sort of lifestyle liberalism, which is extremely socially costly, and economically costly, and destructive, and traditional concerns to do the economy are put to one side. So, ignore all that, and then you have a sort of, you know, you have an extremely ugly culture, where there is no really serious critique, but what I think a problem with some people

41:10on the left is that they have, as it were, adopted as sort of extreme lifestyle liberalism, kind of view, and undermine the family and things like that. And at the same time, they complain about the economic situation. Well, these things are linked. You know, if you have stronger families, if you have an understanding within society of paying people so that they can bring up a family of allowing housing, what to be sort of insane. And a lot of these problems have come about precisely because traditional structures have been destroyed. So, it's a terrible mess. But I think, as you say, people are waking up both to the economic disaster, but also to the fact that maybe, just maybe, the jettisoning some traditional moral ideas of jettison Christianity and things like that, actually leads to much worse results all around.

42:11Yeah. I mean, do you feel that maybe religious education should be really quite focused on in education? Because, I mean, just recently, Northern Ireland, the Supreme Court ruled the RE was actually not going to be, as I said, it was illegal to actually teach RE in Northern Irish schools. So, that is a massive turnaround. And, you know, this is something that we're facing at the moment where it's almost being, you know, Christianity is being cancelled. Do you see a lot of that at the moment? Well, I mean, certainly. I think what you have, you have a kind of state religion, which is promoted. So, I mean, one of the sort of deceptions of liberalism is it always claims that it is somehow neutral, neutral about the meaning of life for neutral on these questions. But then, obviously, any school curriculum, particular state schools,

43:16will actually be focused on certain kinds of questions and certain, it will emphasize certain kinds of values. So, what you have, broadly you have had, and we've seen, you know, people talk about the woke stuff or whatever, you see a very partial and biased emphasis in some personal social education you speak to when I was at school, on certain kinds of lifestyles and certain kinds of things are wrong and right. And those can be very much in conflict with some traditional religious ideas. So, religion is then seen as a rival to this, as it were, you might say, state promoted ideology. And any state, in fact, in the end, will not be very tolerant of, despite what it might say, will not be very tolerant of views which fundamentally question, say, things like marriage or the upbringing of children. So, I think there's inevitably going to be

44:17friction and conflict. But I think the thing to remember is a particular ideology which functions almost like a religion, it has its own, you know, heresies and punishments and ways of enforcing things. That is going to be jealous of traditional religions, particularly when traditional religions actually question some pretty fundamental ethical questions, as opposed to sort of some sort of milk or toast, you know, come by our generic messages which in effect is to anybody. Because religion actually, you know, is a very important thing in people's lives, but it's also historically important. So, I think, yeah, it's, I think being aware that certain things that are pushed are necessarily intolerant. So, for instance, and sex is actually very good example.

45:20A traditional view of sexual reality is deemed as extremely offensive or bigoted or phobic or all these sorts of things. Well, those are actually the deep-seated beliefs of religions over thousands and thousands of years across the world throughout history. And we have a very small minority, very recent view within world history, which is radically opposed to all of that. And that is taught as though that is absolute common sense and all of this religion stuff is false. So, it doesn't surprise me that such oppressive measures come in. Of course, it's not very good for the self-image of a country which claims that it's liberal because it says one way neutral. But I think that neutrality is really ultimately a sham. You know, you can't just park fundamental questions. What you can do is have really serious discussions of them. But that, of course, is not that if you look at all the name-calling that surrounds these kinds

46:24of debates, that is clearly not the interests of many of the elite in this country. And I presume Northern Ireland. Yes. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. Now, abortion and assisted suicide, I know we touched on it earlier. Are we witnessing a fundamental shift in how society values human life? I mean, we're having this massive debate at the moment going on in the House of House of Lords about assisted dying. And the Lords are doing a sterling job at defending the value of human life. And of course, it's now going into next year and it's ping-ponging around this whole committee stage. I mean, do you think that it's almost like, I mean, when I was listening to it last week? And they had an issue. They were looking at assisted dying for prisoners, people who are homeless, and also pregnant women. And you know, this whole issue came up about,

47:29do you encourage a woman who is pregnant, who have, you know, to take assisted dying that decision. And it was defended very heavily by Lord McKinley, who just, you know, he really said, you know, we need to value the life of the fetus because it's feticide, basically. And, you know, I couldn't believe Lord Falconer absolutely said, you know, it's a fate accompli if she's pregnant, then, you know, the fetus dies as well. Unbelievable. What's you view on that? Well, I think it's a very good illustration of a kind of fanatical position. And the fanatical position is, there's this thing called autonomy. And that, as it were, is where we put all the value on autonomy. And we don't actually address the actual choices. So you people talk about, I've got a right to choose. I've got a right to choose. Well, a right to choose what, I mean, fairly obviously, what matters is what you are choosing. That's

48:32what needs to be examined. What does that involve? Okay. Not just this sort of abstract universal right that actually doesn't go into a description of what's being chosen. So you see this with the abortion debate, well, I've got a right to choose. And then sometimes we'll choose what. And then you need to talk about, well, what is an abortion? What is the status of an unborn child or fetus? An embryo? What, what metaphysical status does that have? And what, what does that mean morally? Those are very big questions which need to be debated. But they don't, they get completely ignored if someone just says, I've got a right to choose. And your anti-choice. Well, what's the choice? You know, that's not what you say about almost anything else. Okay. And just look at, look at the laws we have. But what we've seen in the led bit of debate is again, I have a right to choose. Okay. And then people are saying, well, let's examine what that means. What does it mean about traditional ideas about the taking of an innocent life? Okay. Including your own. What does

49:39it actually mean to say that? So we have immense dishonesty from led bitters. She gets very, very angry if you say suicide. Oh, yes. Oh, it's not suicide. Well, it's, it's willing your own death and getting the equipment to carry it out. And in fact, the legislation has to change the current suicide act, which makes it blindingly obvious that it is about suicide. The reason is that suicide still has an emotional charge for a lot of people. They think suicide is something bad, something to be avoided, something you try and prevent people from carrying out. So, I mean, the Faulkner response was interesting because in the sense, it shows that there's this fanaticism of this so-called right to choose. And no matter what you plug in at the end, like, well, what if the woman's pregnant? And it looks as if she's in choosing that she's taking another life as well. And he's got really nothing to say to that. Yeah, exactly. And this shows the fanaticism

50:46that in fact, there's a driving force that this must be legislated and we must ignore all amendments, all questions, all of the evidence that the Royal Colleges are not in favour of it, you know, the disability groups are not in favour of it because the people who are opposing it generally will see how it will affect all sorts of vulnerable groups, okay. This as a religion of autonomy will actually have enormous numbers of victims of people who don't actually have much autonomy, but will feel social pressure and will pressure themselves to end their lives. So, I think that's why we get these kind of grotesques. Yes, yeah, absolutely. Now, what also I was thinking, you know, because they were talking about, you know, people with severe depression. And of course, if someone is, for instance, if this bill at the moment is for people with six months to live or less, and you wonder if a homeless person, for instance, is homeless, they've had a diagnosis of whatever,

51:53and they've been given six months to live. You know, would their view change if they were set, if someone said to them, listen, let's put you up in a wonderful facility, give you palliative care and see how it goes, you know, rather than getting them to agree to suicide themselves, basically. This is the same for prisoners and for pregnant women because palliative care is being decreased. And I think it's a choice because people aren't getting the palliative care they need and the pain relief or whatever. And it's, it's almost like a choice because do I go through all that pain in an uncomfortable situation like being homeless or a prisoner or a woman who's, who's feeling insecure? Or do I just end it all because it's all too awful to face? Sure. So, that's what I'm seeing, to be honest. Is there's not enough about, you know, looking after people who have six months to live?

52:56Yeah. Well, it's the very opposite of actually what medicine is about. Medicine is about healing. And interestingly, actually, the Hippocraticosis, which is a pre-Christian dose by several hundred years, it specifically rules out, is synasic. It specifically rules out that as paradigmatically anti medicinal. It's anti healing. So the presumption, and indeed, it was in the NHS's founding documents that, you know, you're there to help an assistant preserve life. That's a massive assumption, a societal assumption that will be removed here. Okay. And if you remove that presumption, everybody becomes much more vulnerable. Okay. In very obvious ways, for example, you said if people are depressed and feeling vulnerable, things like that. Well, unfortunately, given human nature, there are very many people, maybe all of us at some point, who, you know, find other people very burdensome. And it may be that we send out a message,

54:01knowingly or not, that actually they are pretty burdensome. And they would be better off being dead. And other people would be better off if they were dead. Okay. So that's that's true. Then seeps into people, particularly people who are depressed, particularly people who feel undervalued. And the, I mean, the idea is basically that the message goes out. There are certain lives that are unworthy of life to use, phrase used in the 30s. There are certain lives that are unworthy of life. Okay. And if you happen to think that your life is unworthy of life, we will support you in that. The state will say this is a good thing. And we will bestow death on you at your own hand, but we'll give you the means. That's an extraordinary, dangerous change. It's dangerous territory. It's very, I mean, it should be stressed. There are people who, many people who are not against, who don't have an inherent objection to suicide, but who see this

55:02law as extraordinarily dangerous. It certainly is. I mean, even talking to farmers, you know, farmers with the inheritance tax, if you're an elderly farmer, and you've been a lot of the farmers, I mean, I've been talking to them quite, you know, quite in depth. And there's some of them who you know, might be in their 80s or whatever, they don't, they know that if they, if they don't live past April, then their farms are going to be gone for their families. And they're even turning down cancer treatments in order that, you know, they died before April, which is just an awful thing for people to face. And it just shows you exactly what Starmer's government is actually creating here. Well, I think, I mean, it's very striking that Starmer, there's a leak in the Guardian newspaper, which was of a memo, which shows quite clearly that Starmer has been backing this bill behind the CS, and it was very deliberately brought in as a private member's bill.

56:07So it's to escape certain checks and balances. And I think it's actually quite a fitting, with regards to Starmer, that it seems to me the one bit of legislation, he hasn't done the legislation he promised in all sorts of areas. But the one bit he really is committed to is is something to help people to end their lives. It seems to sort of be reflective of an attitude to people as people who you don't value the inherent value of their lives at all. Rather, you make life very hard for all sorts of people. And then you say, oh, well, you know, that could be a valid reason for the system. So I want to involve the inherent context. I mean, you have a bill that doesn't at present, doesn't really have any safeguard against that. And in fact, this kind of legislation, I think you can have no real safeguards. We've seen in every other legislature where the decision is coming, that it very quickly expands to cover a huge amount of other cases,

57:12because there's nothing inherent. For example, six months to live, well, I'm, you know, first of all, predicting life, length of life is notoriously difficult. But it makes no reference to pain. So someone might say, well, what if I'm in great pain, but I have a lot of six months to live, aren't I being discriminated against? Why didn't you give it to me? Okay. So it's all of these things become very arbitrary. And there's a slippery slope problem that if you can't give a justification for something further down the line, so there's nothing in the legislation that doesn't protect against a similar rationale being given for something that goes beyond the law. So it's, it's really terrifying. And I mean, the good news is that a lot of people, religious and non-religious left and right, people from all sorts of different backgrounds are opposing this very strongly. Yes, yeah. I think it's revealing itself. Yeah. Yeah. I think what it does

58:15is it exposes the fanaticism of those pushing it, because in a sense, they have, and actually, going back to the sectional revolution, you know, we were told abortion, for example. Oh, well, it will just be a few very difficult cases, just a few small, small, very difficult cases. And then incrementally, they change things, don't they, to make it very quickly. I mean, we could be facing 300,000 abortions, I think, the next figures. You know, well, and people warned at the time that this would happen, and they were told they were nutters, they were naysayers, scare mongering, and this has happened again and again and again. With these radical social changes, there are people who warn about the dangers, and they're dissimists, cranks, or lunatics, or whatever. And then 30, 40 years right, exactly that's happened, and society has become worsened and changed, and people say, well, that's a long time ago, move on, you know. And it is concerning that this could all lead to the Canadian model

59:17that's, that we're seeing unfolding in Canada with the made system, the medically assisted and how vulnerable people are being encouraged to take their own lives, you know, people with mental health issues, and just even just general depression, and it's really concerning. It's almost as though our government are really pushing this through to accelerate it to that level. Would you agree? I mean, that's where it looks as though it might be going. I mean, I think what one can certainly say, of course, there are, there are hidden motives. I mean, Matthew Paris, sort of very much an establishment journalist, you know, openly came out and said, well, this will save loads of money, and it's a good thing. And of course, he was sort of, people told him to be quiet, but I think he said the quiet bit out loud. I think some people are just so obsessed by this autonomy idea, this idea that this is some sort of great new expression of autonomy, that they just couldn't care less about the consequences.

1:00:20It's become, that that's what's worrying is it's become almost a quasi-religious obsession, such that any evidence is irrelevant because this is such a great good. It's because, basically, what I'm saying is some people want to do this, and therefore that's it, and hang the consequences. And actually, I noticed John Gray, who's quite an interesting philosopher, who is certainly pro-choice at the beginning of life with abortion, and in principle pro-Euthanasia, or at least assisted suicide, he came up the other day and just said, this will mean death panels, this will mean horrific people making decisions ultimately over whether your life has any value, or agreeing, or pushing your own assessment of yourself, and he doesn't like it at all. So it's not, it's not only people who have a principled objection or some idea about the safety of life, it's people who

1:01:22have known principle objection, but they see exactly where this will lead to, where it's going. And I think yet this obsession with, it goes back to this idea that you can create yourself in any way, and that all of your choices should be affirmed, regardless of what they actually do, what they bring about. Gosh, we've covered so much, and do you know this has been a fascinating conversation, and I could talk to you forever, but I'm not sure how long we've been, it must be an hour, I haven't looked at the watch actually, but oh gosh, yes, we've just been over an hour. So where can we find your book, your ethical sex? So I think it's still on Amazon, so it's Amazon.co.uk, otherwise people can write to me if they would like. My email is A McCarthy, or one word, lowercase, at, what is it? A McCarthy at biosenter.org. Oh, right, I'll put this all

1:02:28in the notes, yeah, the details. Yep, so no, if they want to find out more, then I'm very happy. And are you on social media at all? Not really, no, I look at it, I don't, I, yeah, keep a little profile that way. Absolutely. Okay, well, do you know, I could talk to you forever. I mean, is there anything else that you'd like to say to finish up? Because we've covered a lot of detail, which I think it's probably a good time to stop, because there's so much information here that I think people probably watch this over and over again, I know I will, because you've really answered almost, well, just about every question I had, which is, you know, was quite a lot of questions. So it's been a really, really interesting and, yeah, I opening interview. So is there anything else you'd like to sort of say to round up? Well, just to thank you,

1:03:31actually, very much and the work you do. But also, you know, that I think the debate on many matters is very restrictive. And I think just getting out to people, I mean, you're saying you're talking to farmers, but just talking to people who are actually affected by these changes is extremely important. And I feel as though one of the reasons that certain kinds of legislation can get through or be pushed is precisely because many, many people's voices are ignored in the euthanasia debate. That was true for a very, for a very long time. It's got a little bit better, but, but the victims of many things are ignored. So we have victim culture, but it's only very selected specified victims who get, get a voice. So I think getting those voices out is really important work, particularly now, more than ever. And that's true across the range of subjects. Because in a way, you don't really see the effects of legislation unless you listen and speak

1:04:35to people who have the relevant experience of the effect. So I think that's that's very valuable work. How would you encourage people to, I mean, do they write to their MPs? How can people almost get a counterculture going on on all of this sort of devaluing of human life? How can we do we write to our MPs? I mean, I think I certainly write to RMPs. I mean, it is still worth doing just because the sheer numbers may cause a bit of a shift. And we've seen it a little bit with the with the lead beat bill actually. I think, you know, but also I suppose making people aware that this is a very significant voice. And that means, you know, in your conversations with people, and not just letting everyone assume we all agree on this, because perhaps we don't. And the more you speak up, the more other people will have the courage to speak up. And I think the other thing

1:05:40is, you know, depending on where you are, I mean, if you're in the academy or something like that, you know, write papers, you know, I mean, you need to try and, as it were, change the culture many, many different levels that include the elite level as it were. But it also includes very importantly, sort of more on the ground. And just speaking in your local communities, organizing, speaking up, and also not. I think a lot of people end up alienating each other on separate issues, but trying to remind ourselves that, you know, whether people are left or right or atheist or religious or whatever, there's actually a huge amount of moral commonsense for a better word that people do agree on. Exactly. And that actually unifies you. And once you're unified, you can speak. So not to sort of, you know, you're always going to disagree with people. We all disagree with each other about all sorts of things. But there are

1:06:41very, very big questions. And what I'd say is if you think carefully about some of those big questions, like we were at the beginning of marriage, that gives you some, some explanation of what's happening in the society. So it's not just the range of disconnected things that annoy you. You begin to have some kind of explanatory theory. And having that means you can tell a story. You have a, you have a story to tell. And it's having a real story to tell that has serious content. And, you know, historical back in as well, that I can convince the people. Yeah, you've really get certainly given me food for thought about maybe writing a bit more about this and putting the word out because it is, it's a fundamental thing about valuing our very life force, everything about, you know, what, what it means to be human, what it means to be alive. And, you know, valuing, giving that a value rather than devaluing it, which it's

1:07:47what, which is what's happened over over the last few decades, actually. And, you know, I, I just want to thank you so much for this interview. It's so important. And I can't tell you how wonderful it is. And, and Tim McCarthy, thanks so much for coming on. And we'll get this out as soon as possible. And thanks very much for joining me today. Thank you very much, Sammy. Thank you.