Misko_Varesanovic wrote: ↑February 19th, 2018, 10:33 am
Funny that you mention 0%, because I came across a very telling statistic in a recent edition of Time Out (London), which is a listings magazine for the UK's capital: apparently, just 2% of Londoners believe that you should wait until marriage before having sex.
Additionally:
1. The average Londoner will wait just 2.4 dates before having sex;
2. For men the average is 1.8 dates; and
3. For women, the figure is 2.7 dates.
Btw, London is far more religious and traditional than the UK as a whole because the city contains significant numbers of Catholics, Muslims, Hindus and Orthodox Jews; if you look at figures, for example, concerning church attendance, London is well above the UK average.
Whether you are socially conservative, liberal or a mix of the two, I can't see how these statistics are good news if you believe in marriage, or even stable relationships. It must be chaos out there.
That said, there is one caveat to the disturbing numbers: Time Out is famously (some would say notoriously) libertine (some would say degenerate). It would be interesting to see just how representative their survey sample is. But even if the figures are out by a quite a bit, this is a seriously perplexing situation.
Interesting facts, but they don't correlate with my experience of London. Yes there are conservative Muslims, mostly adults in their late 50s who grew in countries different from the UK (the Middle East, Africa, etc.) and still hold those traditional values dear. The new generation of Muslims, i.e. those people's children and grandchildren, are far from traditional. Yes, they will tend to be less libertine and promiscuous when it comes to relationships and sex, yet saying they will not have had at least one former partner before marriage, is a bit of a stretch.
In my 18+ years in the UK, the majority of which in and around London, I have never met anyone under age 40 who was fiercely conservative. It is true that the better examples of debauchery are usually found in the more working class/post-industrial centres up North: Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, etc. It is also true that, as it is by now ingrained in modern British society, sex is no more than a recreational activity that can be enjoyed in pairs and even in groups. Not surprisingly: in a society where divorce is seen "as the dual of marriage", an act as natural and obvious as marriage itself, the value of loyalty and restraint cannot be held that high in the first place.
Swingers sites and forums catering to all types of conceivable fetishes and perversions abound and, judging from what I heard and saw, have never been more thriving. Yes, the longa manus of law sometimes peeks into the privacy of a couple or community and throws in an "exemplary" judgment or two, but these are very isolated cases and often only limited to the more violent and uncceptable forms of perversion, like cruelty and obviously child abuse/pedopornography.
Funny you mention Time Out...it's been traditional a flag carrier for the LGBT scene since the 80s, with its coverage of venues, events and locations. This does not mean it is a vector for deviance: it's merely there to cater for those who embrace it.