“UNGODLY FREE-FOR-ALL”

The nation has been presented with an appalling pantomime this week. A large number of significant figures in all walks of life have been covering up their adulterous activities with legal injunctions and super-injunctions on the basis of their right to privacy. The media, and even the general public on Twitter, have been trying to rip off this legal cloak and indulge in scandal on the basis of the right of freedom of speech. What a commentary on the state of our society!


That there should be such widespread “affairs” is a shame on any society. Historically infidelity has, of course, always been there, a privilege for the rich, a squalid curse for the poor. One has to think only of the Restoration under Charles 11. Riches and fame seem only to encourage it, and the celebrity culture appears to prove that in our own day. What a mockery! “Sin is a reproach to any nation”. Ours is widespread and blatant.


That the legal system should be used to cover up such behaviour is, it seems to me, an abuse of law and justice. That cannot be right. It is there to expose and correct destructive behaviour. It’s almost as though the law is being bought. (How much does an injunction cost anyway, I wonder?). The exposure of unfaithfulness in society is one of the ways in which society can keep a restraint on those who undermine society by behaving in such a manner. We are all susceptible to the reproof of our fellows, and rightly so.


Scandal makes news and sells newspapers. It’s a money spinner. It does so because it panders to a very unwholesome streak in human nature – the love of gossip and the delight in seeing someone being brought down or humiliated. It has a nasty fascination. At one time scandal was actually frowned upon as indecent – not today – it’s now the real stuff of news! It can be nationwide, overnight.


One wonders which is the worse sin, the affair itself or the widespread indulgence, especially by the media, in the sordidness of the story of the affair. Every detail, of course, has to be minutely examined, every headline has to be a loud megaphone. Perhaps the greatest irony of the situation is that the media and the literary culture of our day are themselves the greatest influence for the encouragement of such affairs. They provide a never ending torrent of visual and verbal sexual aberration that is bound to encourage degradation.

There are sections of the press which maintain they do not want to scandalise in their pages but sincerely just want to report truth. I shall be ready to believe the sincerity of that only when I see a discreet report of a divorce reluctantly reported in low key in a remote part of the publication!

So what do the judges and Parliament do now about a Privacy Law? The cry is for a new one. But there are some things that you simply cannot legislate for. There is no law that can function without certain boundaries in moral behaviour. "You don’t kill, you don’t steal" – we can legislate for that. "You can’t gossip in public" – we certainly can’t legislate for that, if the gossip is true. We can only legislate for defamation of character where gossip is based on a lie.

We certainly don’t need a law that will cover up unpleasant activity; what we really need is a national resurgence of moral decency. We need a return to decency and to restraint. Moral resurgence calls for spiritual resurgence, but we have set our faces against that!



Bob




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