England's senior divorce judge welcomes end of traditional sexual morality

Sir James Munby, the judge who is President of the Family Law Division in England and Wales, in a speech at the Eleanor Rathbone Social Justice Public Society on 30th May:

“What is the family?
“Time was when most people probably thought the answer was not merely clear but obvious. Today it is more complex.

“In contemporary Britain the family takes an almost infinite variety of forms. Many marry according to the rites of non-Christian faiths. People live together as couples, married or not, and with partners who may not always be of the other sex.
“Children live in households where their parents may be married or unmarried. They may be brought up by a single parent, by two parents or even by three parents.
“Their parents may or may not be their natural parents. They may be children of parents with very different religious, ethnic or national backgrounds, [and they] may be the children of polygamous marriages.
“The fact is that many adults and children, whether through choice or circumstance, live in families more or less removed from what, until comparatively recently, would have been recognised as the typical nuclear family.
“This, I stress, is not merely the reality; it is, I believe, a reality which we should welcome and applaud.”