HAVE we Brits reached a maturity that can cope with a little Godly honesty about our liberal culture?

I’m thinking of those times we’ve made kindly social decisions only later to find that they’re killing the kind of Britain most crave.

A few examples (from many dozens on offer)...

First: In the sixties we cut the apron strings of Mother State and Church to give ourselves more leeway; a wee bit more say in life.

Today, we’ve ended up with all authority so jeered at and junked that even the Pope needed a miracle to survive last week.

Second: The same decade witnessed kind souls trying to stop the back-street slaughter of sad, desperate women with an Abortion Act (strictly and only when mum’s life or mental state was at grave risk).

Today, a reluctant mum-to-be can pop into her local clinic during lunch-hour and have her third, fourth or even sixth abortion — just another form of contraception.

Then, there’s the gay thing.

We chortled so much at Carry-on films and John Inman that we eventually concluded that jailing cottagers caught in park lavatories was not the most civilised of acts.

Nowadays, it’s the critics of gays who face jail, and those who write columns on the subject face long, hard scrutiny from legal, law-enforcing eyes.

Finally, this week sees a political party in power demanding full-blown marriage for homosexuals.

They argued fervently that this would never happen.

For a strident, pride-marching minority it’s upward progress.

I suspect for the majority — cowed into silence by political correctness — it’s progress down an increasingly slippery slope.