For centuries, religion, morality, and values were very closely linked in Western societies. To lead a morally good life was to be a good Christian, and vice versa. Only gradually, and especially with the religious wars in the seventeenth century, with the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, and with the civil revolutions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, did people become aware that there could also be values which were not Christian.1 But change did not stop there. An extensive literature shows that a further profound change of values occurred in the 1960s.2 According to Ronald Inglehart, who is perhaps the most well-known researcher of values, there has been a shi from ‘materialist’ to ‘post-materialist’ values.3 A research group led by Helmut Klages has the same thing in mind when they talk in terms of a transition from values of duty and acceptance to values of self-development.4 According to Klages and his colleagues, values of duty and acceptance, such as obedience, subservience, duty and loyalty, are losing their importance in Western societies, while values of selfdevelopment, such as individualism, imagination, creativity and independence, are becoming ever more important. A signicant component of the change of values relates to norms regarding the family and sexuality: women should now have the same rights and opportunities as men, sex before marriage or without marrying is becoming normal, and homosexuality is also gaining ever greater social acceptance.5