PART of this column is going to be very nasty. I’ll get the nasty bit in first, then you can resume the enjoyment of your breakfast. A man’s former girlfriend discovered a video of him having penetrative sex with a pit bull terrier. Time was when he would have gone to prison for that, but instead he was given a suspended sentence. I see in this distasteful story a parable of how public morality in this country changes –some would say deteriorates.

It’s like this... First an activity is declared to be illegal, a crime for which the perpetrator is punished. Next the activity is made legal. Then it is advertised, promoted and celebrated.

A practice that was once a crime is now regarded as a wholesome activity and what was once a mortal sin is now a lifestyle choice.

Finally, a new offence is created in that anyone who declares the formerly proscribed activity unwholesome becomes guilty of a “hate crime” and is said to be guilty of “****phobia” (Insert any word you like in place of the **** – pit bull, perhaps?).

My parable is not at all far-fetched. Last Friday, 360 members of the House of Lords voted to replace long-standing terms such as “widow” with phrases such as “woman whose deceased spouse was a man” or “that person’s surviving spouse”. Terms such as husband and wife will become redundant.

Many centuries-old statutes were amended in anticipation of the same-sex marriage laws which come into effect later this month.

Wittgenstein wrote: “Change a language and you change a world.” The very best that can be said about the changes is that they are excessively cumbersome. We know instinctively that something has gone profoundly wrong – it’s sick actually–- when it now takes seven words to say what was ever before said by one word.

We might as well have some fun before the whole house burns down. So, for a moment, consider some of the dafter consequences of this murdering of the English language. The posters advertising the pantomime will have to be much bigger as Widow Twanky will henceforth be billed as, The Twanky Woman Whose Deceased Spouse Was A Man. But how long before the terms man and woman become victims of the same genocide?

The changes will make our common language impenetrable. I mean, for instance, how will the biblical translators render the sentence: “A man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife?”

I know: “A person will leave his or her parents and shack up with their spouse person.”

Or perhaps something even more convoluted.

Okay, back to the real world. If you had said 50 years ago, when reforms in the laws concerning public morality were being debated, that the proposed changes would within half a century result in the legal abolition of ancient and familiar terms such as husband, wife and widow you would have been both laughed at and outlawed as a bigot. This is not a hypothesis. I was there when it happened.

We were in an ethics seminar at theological college where I was training for the Church of England priesthood.

Brian Dunn said of a proposed change in criminal and social policy in the matter of sexual relationships: “We mustn’t do that. It will result in the abolition of marriage as we have understood it for millennia.” Most of us did indeed laugh and we called Brian a few unsavoury names.

Brian is no longer with us. I don’t think he would be laughing if he was.