Towards a Brave New World, or Sodom and Gomorrah – the debate over personal freedoms

From the 1st to the 4th of June 2026, the Dead Sea came alive with four days of revelry at the historical site of Sodom and Gomorrah. Israel was hosting the largest LGBTQ+ celebration in the Middle East. The official promotional tag for the event read ‘Pride Rises at the lowest place on earth’. The Judean Desert was transformed into a round-the-clock ‘Pride City’, with hotels, beach activities, art and cultural shows, and musical performances. To the proponents, it was proof that Israel was a progressive, liberal democratic society.

Which brings up the question – What is a liberal democratic society, and how desirable is it?

Is Liberal Democracy truly the best form of social organisation, designed to achieve the greatest good for society and the individual? Following the collapse of formal Communism, there was a lot of positive intellectual energy driving a globalisation movement, founded on the assumption that mankind was one and the same, people wanted essentially the same things – to be free, to live in an enabling and egalitarian society, and to be able to choose and change their leaders. This positivity underpinned a new World Order and a system of trade and interaction on which multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations, were based. It had seemed a no-brainer to assume that such a society was the best environment for the happy, fulfilled citizen to thrive in, whether the location was London or Bujumbura.

A body known as Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), based in Gothenburg University, Sweden, recently produced the largest global contemporary research dataset on Democracy, from 1978 to 2025. It covered 202 countries and territories, involved 4200 scholars, and measured more than 600 attributes of Democracy.

The findings were intriguing.

In 2025, the world had 92 autocracies and 87 democracies. 74% of the world’s population (6 million) lived in autocracies, while only 7% (0.6 billion) lived in liberal democracies. Three times as many countries, including the USA, were in the process of ‘autocratising’, meaning they were becoming intentionally more autocratic, than those that were ‘democratising’, which are making efforts to become more democratic. They tagged the whole process ‘the great reversal’.

Yet, despite ‘the great reversal’, it is still common in many circles to venerate liberal democratic societies as the most aspirational and liveable human communities, and it is appropriate to interrogate the elements that make them attractive, especially to the young, who represent the future of humanity.

What are the core elements of a liberal democracy?

The elements are strong democratic and egalitarian institutions with citizens’ inviolable right of choice, civil liberties and progressive social policies.

What countries embody these virtues, and to what extent do they approximate the mythical ‘ideal society’?

Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway and Finland are renowned as nations with enviable achievements in human development and citizen satisfaction, with comprehensive social welfare systems, strong protections for individual rights and gender equity.

A perfect example of an outlier in the area that is most romanticised by youthful idealists – that of ‘progressive social policies’ is the Netherlands.

This is where a brewing controversy begins to emerge. ‘Progressive social policies’, which should normally embody the best aspirations of human beings as they strive towards a better life, have seen previously unimaginable strides of progress and expansion of possibilities in the past few decades.

Central to it is a relentless advance in individual freedom and a multiplicity of choices. There is guaranteed protection for all minorities. This sounds very good until a question is raised about whether such minorities should include paedophiles and bestialists. There are ever-expanding rights concerning drugs, sexual behaviour, sexual identity and sexual orientation. The story of the Gay Parade by the Dead Sea, symbolically on the site of the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah, becomes a poster for upending shibboleths, as well as the legitimate foundation for the fears of an increasing number of people who are concerned to ask – ‘How much freedom is too much freedom?’

The Dutch decriminalised homosexuality as far back as 1811. Same sex marriage was approved by the state in 2001. There are full marriage and adoption rights for gay couples. Adults from 16 years can legally change their gender without the need to undergo gender reassignment surgery. The Dutch Protocol, created in the 1990s, is a framework for children who think they have the wrong sex organs to suppress puberty with hormones, and to receive cross-sex hormones and surgery. An ‘Embryo Act’ has been widened to make possible the creation of human embryos for Research. Research is ongoing on combining the DNA from two males to create a viable human being. People in extreme illness can request euthanasia from the age of 12 years. Abortion is free and legal for up to 24 weeks.

And drugs. Public policy is focused on ‘harm reduction’ and pragmatism. Personal use of ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ drugs is not criminal, but trafficking in hard drugs is. Cannabis is ‘soft’ and is sold openly in ‘coffee-shops’. It is not uncommon to see tourists, unused to such liberties in their home countries, becoming psychotic in Amsterdam due to excessive smoking of cannabis.

Not unexpectedly, many young people rate Amsterdam among the ‘coolest’ spots on earth. It is life on the cutting edge, not just for freedom, but for the possibilities of Science. In a few years, babies without mothers, born of two men, will be growing up. Perhaps it will be possible to clone a living baby from the cells of one and the same man.

The vista is of unlimited choices and possibilities, a sense of ‘if you can dream it, you can do it’. But the danger is a fundamental change in family, in society, and even in the human person as we know them, and it is not only ‘religious extremists’ who are alarmed.

A brave new world, or Sodom and Gomorrah – reenacted?

It is worth taking a moment to ponder.