Mosley, Public Morality and the Privacy Debate

The Max Mosley/privacy debate continues following the remarks of Paul Dacre. Today the Guardian carries a comment piece by Mosley himself in which he responds to some of the recent debate. It's a well written and well argued piece in which he directly responds to some of the Dacre comments by stating:

'To Dacre, the private pursuit of S&M among like-minded adult
enthusiasts is "unimaginable depravity". His misplaced moral outrage reminds me
of the prejudices once targeted at the gay community, not least by the Daily
Mail.'

He also tackles the issue of public morality which I blogged on yesterday. He writes:

'No reasonable adult will ever object to (or even be interested in) what others
do in their bedrooms provided it is consensual, lawful and in private. So how in
a civilised society can we allow a life to be wrecked and a family to be
destroyed for no better reason than to sell a few newspapers?'

I want to agree with Mosley. It's certainly should be the case but I'm not sure it is the case. A lot of adults (reasonable remains a moot point) would have views that the law may not reflect. For example, on capital punishment. It does not follow that those views are translated into law. Judges, and indeed Mosely, are practising a form of morality, just a very different one to that of Dacre's.

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