Well, today I'd like to welcome to UK column Doctor 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 Trauma, 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, you know, just want to ask you what prompted you to,
to write Ethical Ethical Sex. Well, thank you very much for
having me. So I had quite an interest in
philosophy from a young age and a particularly moral philosophy.
And so I went to study 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 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, of, of this area
of life. But also it's it's importance in
society if one thinks so. I mean, one thing I thought, for
example, rape is a particularly horrendous type of crime.
But if you understand sexual ethics 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 seem to do
such moral damage to people. So that was sort of where I
began is is with a frustration. And I mean, a very good example.
There was the 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 infanticide.
He he's a very hard line utilitarian if you like.
And at the beginning of that book, he says that sex is of no
importance at all for ethics any more than traffic regulations.
So you just have a general set of.
Rules. Yeah, You have a general set of
rules, you know, for traffic, say, and 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, 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 realise
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, to sexual morality, whether
something is consensual or not? It seems to me not.
Quite right. And so really we're looking at
the, the, the whole sexual revolution, you 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, of of sex. So I mean, the most radical sort
of change comes about with the promotion of contraception.
The The contraceptive pill obviously has very big social
consequences because it gets people very used to the idea
that sex is that there's nothing essentially about sex which
relates to procreation to to the.
Coming to be of new. And women's.
Liberation as well, women's liberation where in in a way,
this promise of, of career freedom and sexual freedom and
financial independence, which, you know, all sounds very good
on the outside, but you know, actually has it made women
happier? And I, I, I know a lot of women
at the moment who have, you know, it's led to loneliness and
and insecurity actually. So yeah, that is a whole new
area that that I think people have overlooked.
The fact that is, has it made us happier?
It hasn't made men happier either.
So yeah, I mean, do you agree with that?
Well, it's certainly, I mean, yeah, it it, 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. OK, 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 that you perhaps didn't anticipate.
So 1 a 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 the law will support you,
the medical profession will provide for for this operation
for what had once been seen as something seriously wrong or
problematic. OK, 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 is morally wrong, is
that a woman who is now pregnant is 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 how 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 is that
what you're saying it's been normalized to I think it value
life. Yeah, well, the 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, the best way of, of
supporting that? But if you stay, 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, You know, therefore she should go back and
destroy the child. And I think this, this, this
sort of thinking about autonomy is very dangerous.
We, we also see this with end of life debates actually that well,
why are you choosing to stay alive when you could kill
yourself? OK, if the law changes, it
changes the social pressure and the expectations upon people and
those those those things I think are underestimated.
And, and also we've, we've got this, the, the demographic
collapse in, in, you know, in, in population, in, 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 sure, of course, you know, illustrated.
So what does this reveal about our our culture's moral
direction at the moment? Well, I think by, as it were,
removing the reference of, well, the association between sexual
activity and the coming to be of children.
You remove an awful lot of 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 the a 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 a new new 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 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 of 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 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 for the child as it were.
They are striving towards a child and they in some sense
serve that child. Now that gets reversed if you
change the nature of the institution and the act.
So if you if you change the nature of the ACT it, it somehow
loses its rationale to some extent because you're now
engaged in what's called sexual, 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 marriage, but also, I
mean, it is, can it not within the family framework?
Can it not just be also an act that brings people closer and,
and develops a, a deeper understanding of each human
being? You know, the, the, the couple.
So it's, it's although the, the, the reason the, 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, they're not I, I, I
certainly wouldn't separate them.
I mean, someone who's overly focused on children and forgets
about, yes, the union of the couple is, is doing something
very wrong. In fact, both it's there are two
ways of going wrong, it seems to me.
One is over focus on, you know, childbirth and just having
children and neglecting the marital friendship, as it were,
in the union. The other is to only focus on
that and to deliberately exclude from that the possibility of
children and, and changing the nature of the sexual act so that
it doesn't do that. So and the idea of marriage was
that you have this lifelong commitment where you really
understand the other person is irreplaceable in some sense, so.
This brings us onto the question of then if we, if we look at the
whole LBGTQ expansion and the trans movement, you know that
that in a way that that kind of, you know, this is really a lot
of young people are getting involved in that.
What deeper philosophical or cultural forces are driving that
in, in respect to what we've just talked about?
Well, I think if you change the nature of the sexual act as 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 of for emotional reasons completely unrelated to
marriage, completely unrelated to the idea of building a, a
life around these acts and children and, and, and the
marital union and everything that goes with it.
Then why do you, for example, condemn homosexual activity,
say, or other forms of, of sexual activity which had
traditionally been rather condemned and sometimes in 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 in other kinds of sexual activities or indeed
change the nature of marriage, which we've seen with the
legislation on same sex marriage, which completely
changes the meaning of marriage. It is now no longer has that
traditional meaning. So I think in a sense you've the
these things, as it were, follow logically.
It 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 the 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, you don't really, I mean, the,
the, when it comes to the LGBT area, you, you, you can't really
argue, it seems to me on on grounds of traditional reality,
if you yourself have agreed with the sexual revolution.
So I mean I. Do think the, the whole thing
about sexual identity, if you can, if you can somehow separate
the biology from the identity. I feel that that this again, it
serves the a political agenda where at the moment we're, we're
we're getting this whole identity issue because if you
destroy someones identity, which basically you are, you're
destroying their sexual identity and replacing it with, with
something else. And if you can do that, it, it
kind of is very easy then to morph into the, 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, if it's all kind of
wrapped up with the, with, with understanding who you really
are. And if you're changing who, you
know, the biology that you have, there's a danger of, of it being
almost controlled into an, into a different way.
Like when you look at the, 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. No, I, I just, I think that a
lot of it stems from a down grading of the idea that our
sexual activity has a certain kind of meaning.
It relates to an institution called 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 our 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 that 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, the, the idea that your maleness or femaleness has a
certain kind of meaning, which relates to biology and has many
other meanings. But of course biology is, is
fundamental. Once you do that, then of course
you get people creating their own identity, sometimes in
opposition to their, to their, their biological nature.
And that I think that does. I mean, if people ground their
identities in something that is unrelated to their, what I might
consider their, their, the, the meaning of their bodies, as it
were, 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, were, were required.
And if 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've become much more
atomized. They've become much more
fragmentary. And the family framework does
does actually give that, that you know, that, that security
and, and stable basis for developing your own identity and
your own opinions and, and everything.
So in a way it does, it could, I mean, we, 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 as a sort of a moral calling in a 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 economic setup of our society is
particularly supportive of. Of it's the dependency, isn't
it? It's, it's creating this, this
dependency on benefits which allows for the, the, the men to
take no responsibility and the women to, to, to live alone and,
and receive benefits in, in this dependent sort of cycle, which
isn't good for anyone really. And, and also you've got
fatherless, fatherless sons and, and daughters, but sons
particularly, I think you know, they, they, we, we, 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 idea of
marriage, the fundamental institution, then then clearly
you lose a great deal of foundation and grounding in the,
in the bringing up of, of people that can be threatened in many
various ways. Certainly, you know, the, the
welfare culture can, can be part of that, but also a, a culture
which basically doesn't support families either.
A highly consumerist culture, which is constantly sort of, you
know, you know, actually a very revolutionary way, constantly
undermining in the name of prophets or whatever,
undermining all sorts of social structures that, that deed
favour the family, because the family in a sense is a, is 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, 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, in 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, bereft of the frameworks.
Now that can be very damaging to men, you know who, who now
think, well, why the hell should I take a, a lifelong oath to
another human being or a woman? But also if you know, with maybe
radical feminism or something, you have women who 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.
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 monetised
through pornography, which is a kind of.
Ultimate forward. I'm going to get onto
pornography because I mean. That's an extreme case.
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 your core?
One of the most important things about you is, is who you are
attracted to as opposed to what kind of being you are, you know,
a male or female or something like that.
So but I, but I do think it's interesting that that one of the
strongest forms of identity people tend to identify as is
with a sexual identity. So that maybe 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, you, you, you happen to prefer.
There's something about those kinds of desires which relate to
something beyond yourself. And so in a way, I, I understand
people who want to identify in a particular way around the sexual
things. My, my question would be in what
sense does that have a, a deeper 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 XII? Don't really see how that's a
fundamental role within life with which to identify.
And and why should that be the most important thing about it?
Doesn't seem to me obvious. Yeah.
And, and with pornography, I mean, we, you know, it seems
that we, we're men and women are affected by this because it, it,
it, 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, and the drive for sex without, you know,
I, I feel that it's, it's, it's debasing the whole fundamental
act, isn't it really Sure. And a lot of boys and, 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 it's
it's a dangerous fantasy. And and the danger of fantasy is
that it pretends to be real and then it starts to affect what
you think. So you, you don't, you cease to
see real men and real women of the kind you might form a
relationship with. And, but also it's, I mean,
it's, it's also completely sterile.
It's, it's, it's, it's sort of skimming pleasure of something,
in this case something unreal without.
But you're engaging your sexual emotions now.
I think those emotions actually ideally relate to another human
being who you love and nurture and cherish in a sense.
That's why they're there. But of course you can distort
them. And of course, I mean, the the
irony is that, you know, almost, you know, an awful lot of
people, ordinary people, even if they use porno, feel engaged
with it. They don't actually think it's
good. So you hear this thing where
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 pretence that this is a
normal good thing. And I think it's very striking
that a lot of people who complain about moral changes in
society, moral degradation, they don't want to do anything to
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, I mean within the
industry itself, if we can call it an industry, are horribly
mistreated people who are often in extremely depressed States
and that 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 which are horribly enslaving and and
damaging to to society in in at large and.
When, Yeah, when you look at, when you look at pornography and
how easily it could be, it could be regulated particularly, you
know, youngsters are looking at it.
There should be some, some way of, of, of preventing children
from actually accessing pornography.
If they don't have parents that are safeguarding, then they,
they will have access to it. And what's interesting is just
only this week the government have their remedy against what
they they say is is violence towards women and girls is to
have boys of 11 years plus to have lessons in workshops at
within school to address their deep seated misogyny.
So how does this put the, you know, an 11 year old boy is then
put into a, a, a lesson or a workshop in school and told that
he's got deep seated misogyny and that he's bad and that they,
they need to learn how to respect women, Which I mean, how
do you think that will, you know, sort of 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
know, you, you've got all these influences like Andrew Tate,
who's who's been influencing young boys into this kind of
misogyny. Why isn't something done about
that? And pornography, rather than
giving them this poor, 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 it's particularly at at
very young age, people are very impressionable and often you're
putting ideas in their head that they never had.
But I mean, the hypocrisy is incredible because you have a
government that doesn't really want to do 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, with a kind of
almost a social theory that that somehow you're inherently, you
have an inherent tendency to treating women appallingly.
Well, OK, here's an industry that treats women appallingly
and degrades everybody involved and is extremely addictive and,
and horrible. And you're doing nothing about
that. That's just, you know, ignored.
And then you're going to get into schools and you're going to
try and rewrite sort of rewire people.
And I think it's, it's very damaging generally to have this
idea that that somehow you know, you are, 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 the 11 year
old? You're offering some some 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? What needs to be recovered for a
genuine, 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?
Well, I think I mean, one thing that is that is always sort of
worrying in schools is, is, is there is sometimes a sort of
mistrust of parents. So there's the idea that that,
well, you can't trust parents. The school knows best, but
actually the, the child's primary education is, is within
the family. Now, of course there are
families that that are, you know, are not great, very
fragmented or bad parenting, whatever.
But the presumption should be that the the the school is, as
it were in loco parentis, but it's 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 these stupid parents
need to be sort of retrained or reorganized.
Generally speaking, parents are the look out for the best
interests of their children. Of course there are failures and
then there are people. But, but I'm talking generally
that that is the, the more suitable area whereby the child
is understood as having come from a a father and a mother
having a particular identity within a home.
So I think, well, I, I think strengthening the idea of
marriage is, is a very good place to, to start to, to say
that this is actually, you know, if you're a parent, you, you are
to some extent living for serving your own children.
And that's that's a natural instinct that many people have,
but it's often undermined or or threatened by an extremely
consumerist society, a way of thinking and talking that that
is is ultimately sort of radical or even hyper individualist.
OK. I would say that a fundamental
pre political building block is the family where and 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 history.
Also your your responsibility for the future.
If you have a sort of hyper individualised society, which is
encouraged, I think in part by the kind of economic
arrangements that we have at current and by the idea that
basically if someone desires something, it's good regardless,
you know, 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 that's a very unrealistic way
of viewing any society. The particularly.
In the West as well, because you know, there are other cultures,
other religions that do value, you know, family.
I mean, most of them actually, you look at Islam, they're very
family oriented. So, so Hindus, Judaism, they,
they all seem to have a very, very strong sense of family.
What happened to Christianity? Because it's, it seems to have
just lost its moral compass at the moment.
And how, how does that, how do we get back to that?
Because, you know, Christianity is supposed to be the Western,
you know, 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 the West,
you have a kind of Christian heresy, which is called
liberalism. And liberalism becomes very
powerful. It's associated with some
economic production at, at at certain points as well, and
certain ideas about freedom. And these are very powerful and,
and, 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 very dangerous
because then liberalism, as it as it were, becomes almost like
an acid. 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 a worship of man.
So you end up with this idea that man is somehow this God
like 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 there for
really things that have kind of obviously problematic, but 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 sign is I think
people are exhausted by it. A lot of people are exhausted of
what's called liberalism because they they think, well, 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 the kind of economic results and prosperity
is 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, you know, if not
worse, you know, sort of the extreme collectivism, for
example, or a vicious reaction. But in fact, true liberty, I
think, has to be grounded in sort of return to certain kind
of ethical understandings of our role.
And at a very basic level, that starts within the idea of the
family. I would say so.
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. A move away from a sort of view
of seeing everything is transactional, everything is
replaceable. Now traditionally religion
strengthen that role. Many people are are not
religious, but I think that the truths about the family can be
understood by someone who even without a religious faith just
as easily and and many, many people are coming through to
that. So I think, I think in a way,
the exhaustion of of our society and the creeping sort of
totalitarianism that comes with it.
If you have an ultra high, you know, ultra individualist
society, what you find pretty soon is, you know, 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, I think, you know, focusing on your community, on
your family is, is one way in which you can start to resist
some of. I mean, it is, it is interesting
because I actually just to endorse what you've said, just
just lately I've been talking to a lot of younger people.
I mean, I'm talking people late teens, early to mid 20s and they
are almost rebelling against this, this whole, I suppose,
destruction of, of, of, you know, the, the, the, the, the
moral fibre of, of, of our society.
And, and that, you know, that, that has all of that has been
quite celebrated, I think with, you know, women's liberation
and, and the destruction of the family unit.
And they're, they're saying, well, we want to get married
early and have, have children. And, and there, there's, there
is a bit of a turn around. Do you think that because it's
it's been pushed so far and this exhaustion that you're Speaking
of has actually pushed people to actually you wake up and see
what's really going on? Yes, I do.
I mean, I, I think, I mean it's partly because people 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 it 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, they say this will be fine, This will lead to great
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
liberalisation, 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 or
elements of a particular generation bequeathed them a
huge amount more insecurity because all of these things have
other effects, including economic effects.
So, so OK, great, we've had sexual liberation and now you
can't buy a house, you know, great.
You know 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, I think there's
a story to be told about the, the, 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, you end up with a, 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 with
the economy are, 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,
with some people on on the left is that they have, as it were,
adopted a sort of extreme lifestyle liberalism kind of
view and, and undermine the family and things like that.
And at the same time they complain about the economic
decision. Well, these things are linked,
you know, if you, 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 not to be sort
of insane. And a lot of these problems have
come about precisely because traditional structures have been
destroyed. So it's 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
jettisoning some traditional moral ideas of jettisoned
Christianity and things like that actually leads to much
worse results all round. Yeah.
I mean, do you, do you feel that maybe religious education should
be really quite focused on in, in, in education?
Because I mean, just recently Northern Ireland, the, the
Supreme Court ruled that RE was actually not going to be, they
said it was illegal to actually teach RE in, in Northern
Northern Irish schools. So that is a massive turn around
in. And you know, this, 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 a kind of state religion which is
promoted. So I mean, one of one of the
sort of deceptions of liberalism is it always claims that it is
somehow neutral, neutral about the meaning of life or the
neutral on these questions. But then obviously any school
curriculum, particularly in a state school, will actually be
focused on certain kinds of questions and certain it will
emphasise certain kinds of values.
So what you have broadly you have had, 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 used to be called when I was at school on
certain kinds of lifestyles and certain kinds of things are
wrong and 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 friction and conflict, but I think the thing
to remember is, is, is a particular ideology which
functions almost like a religion.
It has its own, you know, heresies and punishments and,
and ways of enforcing things that that is going to be jealous
of traditional religions, particularly when traditional
religions actually question some pretty big fundamental ethical
questions as opposed to sort of some sort of milk toast, you
know, kumbaya, generic, generic messages, which ineffensive 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 it's I, I
think, I think being aware that certain things that are pushed
are necessarily intolerant. So for instance, and, and sex is
actually a very good example, a, a, a traditional view of sexual
morality is deemed as extremely offensive or bigoted or phobic
or all these sorts of things. Well, those, those are actually
the, 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 repressive messages 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, well, we're
neutral. But I think that neutrality is
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 the, if,
if you look at all the name calling that that surrounds
these kinds of debates, that is clearly not the interests of of
many of the elite in this country and, and, and I presume
Northern Ireland. Yeah, Well, that's, that's,
that's, that's, that's interesting.
Now, abortion and assisted suicide, I know we, 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, it's now
going into next year and it's, it's, it's ping ponging around
this whole committee stage. I mean, do you think that it's,
it's almost like, I mean, when, when I was listening to it last
week and they had an issue, they were, they were looking at
assisted dying for prisoners, people who are homeless and also
pregnant women. And you know, that this whole
issue came up about do you encourage a woman to who is
pregnant to have, you know, to take assisted dying?
That decision. And it was defended very heavily
by Lord McKinley, Who, who, who, who just, you know, he, he
really said, you know, we need to value the life as a fetus
because it's, it's fetus side, basically.
And, you know, I couldn't believe Lord Falconer absolutely
said, you know, it, it it's a state accompli.
If she's pregnant, then, you know, the fetus dies as well.
Unbelievable. What what?
What's your 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 that that 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 what needs to be examined.
What does that involve? OK, 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 you're anti choice.
Well, what's the choice? You know, that's not what you
say about almost anything else. OK, and just look at look at the
laws we have. But what we've seen in the LED
bitty debate is, again, I have a right to choose.
OK. And then people say, well, let's
examine what that means. What does it mean about
traditional ideas about the taking of an innocent life?
OK, including your own. What does it actually mean to to
say that? So we have immense dishonesty
from Leadbeater. She gets very, very angry if you
say suicide. Oh, it's not suicide.
Well, it's, it's willing your own death and, 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.
It the reason is that suicide still has an emotional charge
for lots 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 was interesting because in a 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 though you're you're
she's in choosing that she's taking another life as well.
And he's got really nothing to say to that.
This shows the fanaticism that in fact there's a driving force
that 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, we'll see how it will
affect all sorts of vulnerable groups.
Okay, this as this 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 I think that's why we get these kind of grotesques.
Yes, yeah, absolutely. Now what Also I I was, I was
thinking, you know, because they were they were talking about,
you know, people with with severe depression.
And of course if if if someone is is for instance, if this this
bill at the moment is for people with six months to live or less.
And you wonder if, if a homeless person, for instance, is, is
homeless, they've had a diagnosis of whatever and
they've been given six months to live, you know, would their view
change if they were said? If, if someone said to them,
listen, let's put you up in a, in a wonderful facility, give
you palliative care and see how it goes.
You know, sure. Rather than agree, you know,
getting them to agree to, to, to suicide themselves, basically,
you know, this, this, this is the same, this is the same for,
for prisoners and, and for, 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, or a, 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.
Yeah. Well, it's the very opposite of
actually what medicine is about. Medicine is about healing.
And, and interestingly, actually the Hippocratic Oath, which is
a, a pre Christian oath by several 100 years.
It specifically rules out euthanasia.
It specifically rules out that as paradigmatically anti
medicinal, it's anti healing. So the presumption and, and
indeed it was in the NH s s founding documents that you
know, you're there to, to help and assist and preserve life.
That's a massive assumption, a societal assumption that will be
removed here, OK. And if you remove that
presumption, everybody becomes much more vulnerable, OK, in in
very obvious ways. For example, you said if people
are depressed and feeling vulnerable, things like that.
Well, unfortunately, the 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 knowingly 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.
OK, So that's that's thought then seeps into people,
particularly people who are depressed, particularly people
who 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 a, to
use a phrase used in the 30s, there are certain lives that are
unworthy of life. OK.
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 extraordinarily
dangerous change. And actually, I mean 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 law as extraordinarily dangerous.
It certainly is. I mean, I'm.
Even 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, you know, 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, they, they, they know that if they, if they
don't live past April, then their, 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 is actually creating here.
Well, I think, I think, I mean, it's very striking that Starmer,
there was a leak in the Guardian newspaper which was of a memo
which shows quite clearly that Starmer has been backing this
bill behind the scenes. And it was very deliberately
brought in as a private members bill so as to escape certain
checks and balances. And I think it's actually quite
a fitting with regard to Starmer that it seems to me the one bit
of legislation he hasn't done, the legislation he's 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 sort of seems, it seems to sort of be be reflective of, of
an attitude to people as, yeah, people who, 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 an assisted suicide. I want to involve the inherent
attacks. I mean, 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 you can have no real safeguards.
We've seen in every other legislature where legislators
come in that it very quickly expands to cover the huge amount
of other cases because there's nothing inherent, you know, for,
for example, six months to live. Well, I'm, you know, first of
all, predicting life, the length of life is, is notoriously
difficult, but it makes no reference to pain.
So someone might say, well, what if I'm in great deal of pain and
but I haven't got six months to live?
Aren't I being discriminated against?
Why don't you give it to me? OK, so it's all, all, 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 it's really terrifying.
And I mean, the good news is that 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. And including the war colleges.
Yeah, yeah, I feel that. Yeah, I think what it does is it
exposes the fanaticism of those pushing it because in a sense
they have. And actually going back to the
sexual 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.
They 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,
scaremongering. And this has happened again and
again and again with with these radical social changes.
There are people who warn about the dangers and they're they're
dismissed as cranks or lunatics or whatever.
And then 3040 is right, exactly that's happened and society has
become coarsened and changed. And people say, well, that was a
long time ago, move on, you know?
And it is concerning that this, this could all lead to the, the
Canadian model that's that that we're seeing unfolding in Canada
with the NAGE system, the medically assisted dying and,
and how, you know, vulnerable people are being encouraged to,
to take their own lives, you know, people with mental health
issues and, 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. Do you would you agree?
I'm I'm just. Worried that that's where it.
Looks as though it might be going I.
Mean, I think what 1 can certainly say.
Of course there are there are hidden motives.
I mean, Matthew Paris, you know, 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 he was sort of people told him to be quiet, but
I think he said the quiet bit out loud.
I think. I think some people are just so
obsessed by this autonomy idea that this idea that this is some
sort of great new expression of autonomy.
That they just couldn't care less about the consequences.
It's become that, that that's what's worrying is it's become
almost a, a, a, a quaso of religious obsession such that
any evidence is irrelevant because this is such a great
good. And it's because basically what
I'm saying is some people want to do this and therefore that's
it. And, and hang the consequences.
And actually I noticed John Grey, who's quite an interesting
philosopher, who is certainly pro, pro-choice at the beginning
of life with abortion and in principle pro euthanasia or or
at least assisted suicide. He he came out 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. So it's not, 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 have no in
principled objection. But they they see exactly where
this will lead to, where it's going.
And I think, yeah, this, 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 and 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've haven't looked at the watch
actually. But oh gosh, yes, we've been,
we've just been over an hour. So where can we find your book?
Your 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 e-mail is a McCarthy all one
word lower case at what? Is it a mccarthy@bioscentre.org
OR? G Right.
I'll put this all in the in the. In the notes.
Yeah. The details, yeah.
So so no. If they want to find out more
than I'm very happy. And do you?
Are you on social media at all? Not really, no, no, I look at
it, but I don't, I yeah, keep a low profile that way.
Absolutely, yeah. Okay, well, do you know I, I
could talk to you forever? I mean, is there anything else
that you'd like to say to, to, to finish up?
Because, you know, we've covered a lot of detail, which I think
it's probably a good time to, to stop because there's so much
information here that I think people will probably watch this
over and over again. I know I will because you've,
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, eye
opening interview. So is there anything else you'd
like to sort of say to round up? Is there?
Anything you'd like? I mean, just to thank to thank
you actually very much and 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 and 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 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. I think getting those voices out
is, is, is really important work, particularly now more than
ever. And that's true across a range
of, of subjects because in a way you don't really see the effects
of legislation unless you listen and speak to people who have the
relevant experience of, of the effect.
So I think that's that's very valuable work, you know.
Would you encourage people to, I mean, do they write to their
MPs? How, how can people almost get a
counterculture going on on all of this sort of devaluing of, of
human life? How can we?
How do do we write to? Our MPs, I certainly write to M
PS I mean, it is still worth doing just because the, the, the
sheer numbers may may cause a bit of a shift.
And we've seen a little bit with the, with the Leadbeater bill.
Actually, I, 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,
not just letting everyone assume that 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 to speak up.
And I think the other thing is, you know, depending on where you
are, I mean, if you're in the Academy or, or something like
that, you know, write papers, you know, I mean, you, you need
to try and as it were, change the culture at many, many
different levels. That includes at the elite
level, as it were, but it also includes very importantly sort
of more on on the ground and just speaking in your local
communities, organising, speaking up and also not.
I think a lot of people end up alienating each other on on
separate issues, but 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 of sort of moral
common sense for what a better word that people do agree.
On and you can lose. Yeah, 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 very, very big questions.
And what I'd say is if you think carefully about some of those
big questions, like 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 a, 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, it's having a, a real
story to tell that has serious content and, you know,
historical backing as well that I think convinces people.
Yeah, you've you've you've really get certainly given me
food for thought about maybe writing a bit more about this
and and putting the word out because it's it is it's a
fundamental thing about valuing our very life force.
Everything about, you know, what, 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 is what,
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 Auntie 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, Sandy.
Thank you.