IF IT’S not illegal, then it’s OK. That is the secular, moral relativist approach to life — which I am attacking in a television programme tomorrow evening. To take one example of where it leads, just look (if you can bear it) at a revolting website called lilamber.com, featuring underage girls in provocative poses.

This site, because its girls are scantily clad rather than naked, and are not shown as victims of obvious abuse, counts as soft rather than hardcore porn. It will thus not be covered by the Government’s commendable, if belated, planned legislation against extreme sexual content on the internet.

But lilamber is shameful none the less — and particularly to the supposedly respectable institutions, such as banks and credit card companies, that allow it to flourish by handling payments by its subscribers.

How would a senior manager at Visa react if his own darling daughter was one of the pouting pre-teens on lilamber? Or what would the boss of the internet service provider (ISP) who actually shoves lilamber’s sordid electrons on to the internet do if images of his precious poppet were featured there? They would react with horror. But these financial and IT services are what keep this billion-dollar industry going. Without any way of charging for access, or anyone willing to run their infrastructure, the vast majority of porn sites would go out of business.

The bankers mumble excuses about how they can’t blacklist clients who have a legal business. What nonsense. Financial institutions are all too keen to be choosy about their customers when it comes to creditworthiness or money-laundering — so why not apply the same “smell test” when child porn is involved? These outfits are merely echoing our culture’s mantra: the law is the only moral authority. No one else can sit in judgment. To censor even those sickos who sit at their desks and salivate over sexualised images of children is to be condemned as censorious. After all, in our relativist universe, one man’s pornography is another’s “adult entertainment”.

This thinking has done away with our conscience — the instinctive recognition of good and evil. Yet, bereft of conscience, we can become monsters. Or their accomplices.

Don’t Get Me Started: Godless Britain, Channel 5 at 7:30pm on Tuesday