JUST as the eminent American sociologist, who, 10 years ago, coined the expression "underclass" to describe the feckless, criminalised scum in Britain, returns to find we now have more violent crime than the USA and blames the breakdown of the family for it, it is enlightening to see what different values our government encourages instead.

For although marriage and the traditional family have not been abolished, despite 38 per cent of children in the UK now being born out of wedlock, often with the father no longer around, they have been done away with it as far as New Labour's tax system goes.

As an irate married reader points out, the abolition of marriage in the Chancellor's eyes will enable him to collect £5 a week extra from every married man through the scrapping of the pro-family married man's allowance from next April - a stealth tax that our reader reckons will rake in £3.5 billion a year. Add to this the government's obsession with putting homosexual relationships on a par with traditional families - as with its determination to legalise gay sex at 16, to repeal the Section 28 law banning the promotion of homosexuality in schools and in planning to pack the rebellious House of Lords with pro-gay rights peers to ensure it gets its way - and one would think there is a plot to do undermine marriage and the traditional family. But if the social impact in terms of crime and benefit dependency and dismissal of the moral majority's view seems not to bother New Labour, should we not raise our eyebrows at where this discouragement of family values may yet lead?

We find gay campaigners from OutRage, the body led by Peter TatchelI, now calling for further reforms that would legalise homosexual sex in saunas, public toilets and 'cruising' areas.

"Since recreational sex is a natural activity and popular pursuit, all laws which seeks to control it should be abolished," Mr Tatchell says.

Talk about give 'em inch.

But at least he is not asking for a tax break to go with it, but if he did, New Labour's values might accommodate him.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.