From my own experience living in the UK (as somebody from somewhere else in Europe who also lived in a couple more European countries), Britain is hugelly Moralistic, sorta like Southern Europe 50 years ago before Universal Education when those countries were very religious.

The thing is, Southern Europe has actually moved onwards from that decades ago, as religion's power weakened thanks to high levels of Education amongst the young, whilst in Britain there were a few decades with a bit more moral liberalism which was just about enough to make homophobia socially frowned upon and to make homosexual marriage legal, but no further, and it all seemed to be anchored on who it is or not socially acceptable to shun for their sexuality, so nowadays you get self-proclaimed Feminists in The Guardian (so, supposedly the most liberal people in the most liberal newspaper) with opinion pieces outraged about for the (I! Kid! You! Not!) use of sex dolls by men, with not even the tinyest bit of self-awareness about how that's exactly the same kind of article written about homosexuality a mere 40 years ago only about some other sexual practice that hurts nobody.

Unsurprisingly, that country has even slid down to transphobia in recent years.

So in present day Britain things having slid down so far that there's a moral outrage for some kind of sexual roleplaying or other and a weak and desperate hard-right "center"-"left" government enacting legislation with actual prison time for it, isn't too surprising.

In the XXI century, Britain is quickly passing the most backwards countries in Europe, accelerating towards its "golden age": the Victorian Era.