The Law: And No Ban for Danes

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Each time the U.S. Supreme Court considers and then overturns a censor's ban on pornography, Americans wonder where it will all lead. To an increase in sexual aberration? To corruption of youth? To an outpouring of filth from every newsstand and bookshelf? Parallels with other countries are never exact, but some answers to the questions may be found in Denmark. Eight months ago, that country became the first in the West to pass a law abolishing all censorship of anything written, without exception.

Ten years ago, Denmark would have been as unlikely to pass such a law as Duluth. At the time, Danish courts could—and did—successfully ban such standard suppressibles as the Marquis de Sade and Fanny Hill. But as in the U.S. a decade ago, the explicitly sensational works of Henry Miller and Jean Genet were beginning to slip by. Over the years, liberalizing pressures began to build, until by 1967 kiosks abounded with magazines and paperbacks whose photographs of sexual variations and contortions made their descriptive prose unnecessary.

Then the Flood. An end to pornography suppression was finally proposed in Parliament, and an extensive study was undertaken by the government's four-man permanent commission on criminal-law reform, made up of the nation's Ombudsman, the director of public prosecutions, a professor of jurisprudence at the University of Copenhagen and the president of the court of appeals.

With only the judge dissenting, the commission concluded that censorship should go. Last June, after a minimum of debate, the 176-man Parliament agreed by an overwhelming vote of 159 to 13. What happened? Immediately, of course, a flood of new books came out under such labels as the "Porno Series" and with such titles as Stark-Naked, the story of a frigid girl whose therapy by an orgasm expert is carefully detailed. The ecstatic exactness of description had not been legal before, and publishers settled back to await the hordes of buyers.

Middle-Aged Onanists. They never materialized. Unsold dirty books were sent back by newsstands and kiosks in staggering numbers. According to one publisher, about 75% of the first great overprinting of titles were returned. "Four to six months before the law was changed," says Publishing Adviser Jorgen Rothenborg, "you would distribute 20,000 to 25,000 copies of a new pornographic title. Now, only about half of that number are printed, and a third of them come back. I suppose we only print for the onanists, and that's not youth, but mostly people from 45 to 65." Agrees Publisher Hans Reitzel, who helped pave the way to reform: "There really is a very poor market in Denmark for erotic literature, now that it is no longer forbidden fruit."

It is still too soon for conclusions about the law's long-range impact on Danish mores, which are already among Europe's most liberal. But since the law was passed, there has been no marked increase in sex-related crimes, illegitimate pregnancies, homosexuality, venereal disease or even marriage. That being so, the government is next planning to abolish all censorship of movies and pictures.