>>Obviously, Macaulay had insufficient experience with Americans. Our only saving grace, with respect to legislating sexual morality, is that we tend to be considerably less successful at it.

Which is why, I presume possession of "Extreme Porn" is now illegal in the UK, but not in the States. Or why Child Pornography is narrowly defined in America in the sense that actual children have to be exploited in making it (i.e. no X-rated Simpsons parodies, for example). And why non-commercial consensual conduct between adults now has broad protection in the US (courtesy of the Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas), whereas the same can not be said, so far as I can tell, of the UK. There is a bluenose streak that is part of the American political scene as it is in other places (e.g. England, Scotland, Australia), that I will not deny, but there is also a fiercely libertarian impulse with which this bluenose streak must contend here and a Bill of Rights which makes it hard to prevail over that libertarian impulse in the US.