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76. Further, Justice O'Connor while concurring in the majority judgment added that:

"Indeed, we have never held that moral disapproval, without any other asserted state interest, is a sufficient rationale under the Equal Protection Clause to justify a law that discriminates among groups of persons."[page 582]

77. In Dudgeon v. United Kingdom (supra), the UK Government urged that there is feeling in Northern Ireland against the proposed change, as it would be seriously damaging to the moral fabric of Northern Irish society. The issue before the Court was to what extent, if at all, the maintenance in force of the legislation is "necessary in a democratic society" for these aims. The Court after referring to Wolfenden report observed that overall function served by the criminal law in this field is to preserve public order and decency and to protect the citizen from what is offensive or injurious. Furthermore, the necessity for some degree of control may even extend to consensual acts committed in private, where there is call to provide social safeguards against exploitation and corruption of others, particularly those who are specially vulnerable because they are young, weak in body or mind, inexperienced, or in a state of special physical, official, or economic dependence. The Court concluded as follows:

But moral conviction or instinctive feeling, however strong, is not a valid basis for overriding the individual's privacy and for bringing within the ambit of the criminal law private sexual behaviour of this kind." [para 54] The Committee regarded the function of the criminal law in this field as:
"to preserve public order and decency, to protect the citizen from what is offensive or injurious, and to provide sufficient safeguards against exploitation and corruption of others, particularly those who are specially vulnerable because they are young, weak in body or mind, inexperienced, or in a state of special physical, official, or economic dependence, but not to intervene in the private lives of citizens, or to seek to enforce any particular pattern of behaviour, further than is necessary to carry out the purposes we have outlined." [para 13 and 14]