BBFC

[Makaris]

In fact, most of the details refers to cuts for "sight of urination" in certain sexual contexts. In all such cases they report that this requirement reflects "current interpretation of the Obscene Publications Act 1959", and I find this quite interesting.

I've looked at the Crown Prosecution System guidance notes to the OPA on their website, and I'm not sure that what is said there exactly supports this interpretation. This guidance does, indeed, make reference to the area of "watersports", but only in a very specific context:

" .. activities involving perversion or degradation (such as drinking urine
or smearing excreta on a person's body.. )".



This rather precise formulation appears deliberately to exclude from the constraint a whole range of activities that might generally be categorised as "urolagnia" and which typically are those which form the context of the cuts demanded by BBFC - see, for example, the recent detailed list of cuts for the "Page 3 Girls Peeing 2" title.



The last discussion of this topic which I've been able to locate is an interview with Robin Duval published in Sight and Sound in Dec 1999, which includes the following remark:

" The local police, or rather the local police on CPS advice, are still from time to time looking for convictions under Section 2 of the OPA for urolagnia, and they're getting them. And as long as juries take that view, that has to be our benchmark."

I wonder if this statement is still true five years on - and more precisely is it true of "urolagnia" in the wider sense (as in the "Page 3 Girls" activity) or in the narrow CPS formulation (as in "drinking urine")? And does the final sentence quoted - "as long as juries take that view.." - indicate that the position is actively monitored and reviewed?

[ernie]

At least in the cold war days our government had someone who shared their extreme views on sexual censorship, the USSR but since they gained their freedom, that appears to leave only ermm, us! where adults are not allowed to make up their own minds on such things.

Can anyone imagine the French adult public being treated in this way and more to the point, can anyone imagine the French putting up with it if they were.