SCOTLAND’s traditional presbyterian attitude towards sex appears to be loosening with a new survey showing a more relaxed approach to issues such as extra-marital sex, pornography and prostitution, write Karin Goodwin and Marc Horne.

The YouGov poll, commissioned by The Sunday Times, shows more than half of Scots do not consider it morally wrong to have an affair while married or in a stable relationship.

Men are least troubled by infidelity with 46% saying they do not believe it is wrong to cheat on your partner, compared with 57% of women.

The survey also found only 33% of Scots believe prostition is wrong. In 2002, 35% said it should be illegal.

Only 21% believe there is anything wrong with looking at pornography — in 2000 a poll found 31% disapproved — and around two thirds believe there is nothing wrong with making porn.

Six years after the repeal of Section 28 of the Local Government Act, which banned the promotion of homosexuality in schools, attitudes toward homosexuality appear to have relaxed.

Fewer than one in five Scots said they believed homosexuality was morally wrong — about 30% down on a previous poll in 2004.

Morag Mylne, an Edinburgh advocate and convener of the Church of Scotland’s Church and Society Council, was disappointed with the results of the poll.

“The church takes a strong view that adultery, prostitution and pornography are unacceptable because they undermine and diminish the value of human relationships,” she said.

“Adultery clearly takes marriages apart and the same is true of pornography and prostitution. As well as saying that those activities are wrong, the church recognises that caught up in adultery, in prostitution and pornography are people who are hurt and hurting.”

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