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Why is England so "quaint" about porn? Other members of the European community are notorious pervs and even the U.S., with its "moral majority" is the world's leader in porn. Only Japan with it's pixelation of penetration (though shooting baby eels from assholes is okie-dokie) can compare with England's inhibition.



Turn it around: why is the US so permissive? Porn certainly has plenty of enemies over there, religious nutters have a far greater influence. As far as I can see there was never a conscious decision by the US government to allow porn - you got where you are as a fortunate, but completely unintended, side-effect of the first amendment. Porn has vocal enemies almost everywhere, whereas consumers prefer not to shout about it, so it never looks expedient for politicians to make pro-porn moves. They mostly ignore it.

As it was here in the UK. In fact, the politicians never did grasp the nettle, the law remains unchanged, but it's vague and leaves much to the judgement of unelected board members. What happened in 2000 was a minor revolution amongst those board members, resulting in an outbreak of common sense and the decision to certificate porn R18, so it can be sold in licensed sex shops. (The problem now is the shortage of licensed sex shops, but the internet is rapidly making this irrelevant.)

As for other European Countries, much of their "permissiveness" is simply because governments never got around to legislating against porn. For example just last month the Netherlands decided to outlaw animal porn. It's not like anyone ever decided that animal porn was a good thing, but by default everything is legal until there is a law against it.
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"If I were a guy, not swallowing would be a deal breaker. So what if you cook and clean? I can get a maid for that." - Gia Jordan