That was a totally fascinating post. Things in the UK must have been different even then - I was in London in the sixties as a student and no-one I knew was talking about sex - they were all getting into it. Same with drugs - I knew they were around and knew people who used them. Oddly the one thing people didn't do was drink much - partly because of having to get around on public transport, and because public drunkennness was much more stigmatised then than now. Watching BBM I was surprised by the assunption that they would drink constantly, and spirits at that, and would smoke, specially as much they did.
So their idea of what constitutes sin was related to sex because other things were't an issue for them, either because they didn't see them as wrong or because they didn't have access to/know about them. Makes sense and shows what a difference growing up in one place as opposed to another can make. I don't think it was possible to be "rural" in the Jack and Ennis was in 60s England - not so sure about the three Celtic countries, but I remeber being surprised by aspects of the same thing when we were in some southern and western states even in the 80s and 90s.