about Dedicato a mio marito & Sesso e cellulari

[soljARis]

Religious background???
What are you talking about?
In Italy porn has always been more mainstream than in any other country on earth. Nowhere else you will find porn magazines and tapes sold in newsstands and kiosks, publicly visible by anyone passing by, side by side with sport magazines and health books.
Italy has a law, dating back to the 40's, that says that noone may be made responsible for anything having a SIAE (the local equivalent of GUFA or RIAEE) stamp except the SIAE recognized publisher himself. This always protected owners of movie theaters, newsstands, videorentals, sex shops from any possible obscenity charge.
In Italy the institute of censorship has been abolished about 10 years ago, following the case of "Toto' che visse due volte", a blasphemous mainstream movie (see for details). Even before that, preventive censorship only applied to theater exhibitions. Material distributed only for private use has never been subject to any censorship, even in the '70s. Any attempt to stop distribution of porn material by some judge always resulted in the failure of any trial, because nothing that was intended for private had been deemed subject to concepts like "public moral".
Apart from that, the only kind of material whose production, distribution and possession is considered illegal by Italian laws is child porn, but - once again - if such material happens to have a SIAE stamp on it, the owner of the material can not be charged. For this very reason many local shops still have Traci Lords material.
Anything else (scat, beastiality, hard S/M, rape tapes, whatever) is and always has been perfectly legal and massively available around here.
In theory only the open air shooting of porn is illegal (as "obscene acts in publicly visible place"), but even this kind of violation hasn't been prosecuted in the last 10 years or so.
Until now the church had never been able to interfere with this. Any kind of attempt to even overtax pornography (like it does happen in your own islamic republic of France) had always been soundly defeated in the local parliament, despite most MPs considering themselves catholics and asking for the vote of the catholic people.
That is because the consumption of porn here is higher than anywhere else. It has been estimated that more than the 80% of male Italian adults are porn consumers. Any attempt to ban some sort of porn would be extremely unpopular and potentially costly in terms of electoral power of about any party.

On the other hand, police forces had always been very hard on the repression of prostitution and on night clubs whose dancers did escort on the side. But this is another matter.

[Takezho]

soljARis wrote:

> Religious background???
> What are you talking about?

Italie: le r?f?rendum sur la bio?thique invalid? par l'abstention
L'Eglise catholique appara?t comme la grande gagnante de ce scrutin.

Le divorce en Italie
Du fait de la forte influence des positions du Saint-Si?ge dans la P?ninsule, le Code civil italien n’a autoris? le divorce que tardivement, en 1970.

Laws change, adapting to the society. So now porn have more influence than the catholic church in Italy. Ok then.

[soljARis]

Those articles you posted the links are the usual left-wing crap.
In Italy the last 20 or so refererda had been invalidated because of abstension. Here the vast majority of people are absolutely fed up of any kind of referendum, whatever the matter, because of 2 reasons:
1) Absolute abuse of this instrument by a few minority parties (mainly the NeoCommunists, the Radicals and some justicialist right wing movement headed by Mario Segni), in some years, around the mid '90s, there had been something 2 referenda vote rounds with 10 different questions each.
2) Proved uselessnessy of this instrument, since the abrogation of a few institution by referendum (ie Ministry of Agriculture, proportional quote in the electoral vote) has been then restored by the parliament under a different definition.
The church is just bragging about a victory that was not due to their campaigning. It was the left parties who were stupid to indict that referendum in the first place. Nowadays there is no matter that would attract 50%+1 of the Italian electorate to partecipate in a referendum vote.

Also bioethics is a completely different matter from porn. There are quite a few non-christian personalities (at both worldwide level i.e. Francis Fukuyama and national level i.e. Oriana Fallaci) who are against the total liberalization of bioethics technology (ever heard about the danger of eugenetics?).

About the divorce question, first we are talking about really different times (before 1970). Second, the major resistance to it was not the church, otherwise it would have been approved at the beginning of the 20th century, before the rise of Mussolini, when catholics were completely cut out from the historical liberal governments that rules Italy from the "national unity" (1870) to the "march over Rome" (1922).
The main resistance had always been the southern part of the country and its culture. Allowing the divorce would have meant outlawing the "passion killing" that provided for low sentences for one of the consort that killed the other one, if the latter was cheating. This "passion killing" use was common in regions like sicily or calabria until the '60s and it had no religious connection, it was only due to cultural backwardness of those places (you have to keep in mind that while Italy was united in 1870, in many aspects there still are 2+ different nations inside the Italian soil and more so was 30-40 years ago).

OTOH, when it comes to porn only a very few really small hyper-bigot groups had ever been really against it. Sexual curiosity had always been one of the very few features linking all the Italian people. Here brothels were completely legal until 1959 and then it was the left wing who outlawed them, in the name of feminism.

[mark shanon]

>So now porn have more influence than the catholic church in Italy.

uh?

[ben3]

I first planned to post this message in the 80s French releases, but it fits well the discussion. The case of "L'essayeuse" is a good example of how porn in France was first tolerated, then criticized and finally became accepted. However, there were still a few problems in the late 80s, under Charles Pasqua who managed to ban among other things the famous French porn magazine Projextion priv?e.

"L?essayeuse" by Serge Korber under John Thomas:

According to pornstar Val?rie Boisgel in Star System number 16 (1976) : "it was an erotico-comic story? the shooting occurs in good conditions thanks to the good mood and atmosphere spread by Thomas Korber". Authors Jouffa & Crawley write about the movie that "there was no matter to write to one?s family". The movie was simply rated x when it was released in Octobrer 1975 in 10 UGC movie theaters. In April 1976, it was rated x by ministerial order.

However, at the same time, the Catholic Family Associations (200 associations) and the Union of the Family Associations (43), shocked by the proliferation of porn in France, decided to take step and find an example. They found it in "L?essayeuse". The two associations filed a suit against the director of the movie, the scriptwriter, the film editor and the star of the movie. They were joined by hundreds of other groups such as "The old of Montreuil", the French Scouts and an association of? blind.

Verdict : the movie had to be burnt. The result was a dramatic decrease in the number of French porn movies produced afterwards : around 46 in 1980. This led to more soft porns, lots of editing and more erotic scenes in mainstream movies. In 1985, following strong demand by subscribers, Canal + (French paying cable) broadcast its first porn movie on August 31, "Exhibition".

(comments based on the book ? Entre deux censures, le cin?ma ?rotique de 1973 ? 1976 ? (could be translated as "Between censorship, the erotic cinema from 1973 to 1976") by Fran?ois Jouffa & Tony Crawley, Ramsay Edition, 1995)

[Takezho]

soljARis wrote:

> Any kind of attempt to even overtax pornography (...) had always
> been soundly defeated in the local parliament (...).
> (..) Any attempt to ban some sort of porn would be extremely
> unpopular and potentially costly in terms of electoral power of
> about any party.

[mark shanon]

That porn wasn't overtaxed wasn't due to a big influence of pornographers on italian politics (only thinking about it makes me smile) but probably to the fact that politicians deemed expedient not to make enemies or to other considerations. You know, the first person who wakes up in Italy comes off with an idea that is afterward discussed for weeks on italian media and, generally, fizzes out by itself. If pornographers had that much influence, then we would have a law on porn (which we never had and pornographers always reclaimed, vainly); or we would have a law on prostitution instead of having an anarchic (and socially damaging) situation which permits all kinds of abuse. And it would be hardly deniable that this state of uncertainty is due mainly to Catholic Church influence (and also to politicians' ineptitude).

[soljARis]

While the publishing of pre-electoral polls in Italy is subject to severe restrictions, politicians do have data about the result of most law they propose on their electoral figure.
So they know that any attempt of putting limits or taxes on pornography would result in strong delusion and potential electoral retaliation. This is for about any party, since the consumption of porn in Italy is widespread on people of all ideologies. This and not the direct influence of pornographers (though some of them do lobby) is what always kept the Italian parliament away from any intervention on porn.

[mark shanon]

I think that any new tax is unwelcome and it would involve retaliations, though it might be only from a minority like that of porn consumers. I think that, more probably, there was some problem with the definition of porn which, in lack of a law, it is hard to define.

>though some of them do lobby

never heard. can you elaborate on that?

[egal]

Thanks for the detailed information.

off topic:

I remember when I was a young boy and made holidays in Italy for the first time in the early eighties. I was amazed to see all the porn/ sm comic books sold at public newsstands.I got really excited when I bought some of them and "smuggled" them to germany. They gave me pleasure for a long time.

Viva Italia!