utilitarianism

• • Act Utilitarianism would judge an action based on whether it produced the most amount of pleasure compared to other actions. If a sexual act, whether it is homosexual or pre/extra marital sex, maximises pleasure compared to the other option of not doing or allowing them, then it would be good to do/allow them.
• Mill advocates the harm principle: that people should be free to do as they like as long as they do not harm others. This includes consensual sexual behaviours which are private.
• Mill’s conception of society is of individuals each pursuing what seems good to them, their only universal bond being the wrongness or illegality of harming others.

  • “The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.” 
• Devlin: invisible bonds of common thought. Devlin argued that society has the right to protect itself; the purpose of the law is to guard against threats to the existence of the society. A society cannot survive without some moral standards of the sort which are imposed on all. . He claims ‘history shows’ that loosening moral bonds is ‘often the first stage of disintegration’. A society is not held together ‘physically; it is held by the invisible bonds of common thought’.
•  Since a society has a right to continue existing it must therefore have a right to impose some moral standards by law. If the feelings of an ordinary average person towards homosexuality are of ‘intolerance, indignation and disgust’ then that is an indication of potential danger to the social fabric should those feelings not be backed by law.
• • Devlin claimed that society has the ‘right to eradicate’ vices so ‘abominable’ that their ‘mere presence is an offence’.