Pornographic lesbian film wins Palme d’Or: festival director urges gay ‘marriage’ opponents to watch
On the same day as up to a million traditional marriage supporters marched in Paris against France's new gay 'marriage' law this past weekend, a sex-saturated film about lesbian lovers took home the country's top film award: the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d’Or.
The French film, entitled in English “Blue is the Warmest Color,” focuses on a 15-year-old French girl who falls in love with an older art student. It has been as much talked about for its no-holds barred graphic sex scenes, as for the quality of the story or the acting.
According to the UK’s Daily Mail, one lengthy sex scene, clocking in at nearly 12 minutes, leaves “nothing to the imagination.” A writer for Variety said the film contains "the most explosively graphic lesbian sex scenes in recent memory."
The over-the-top sexuality was viewed by some as a barrier to the film’s success, but on Sunday the Cannes jury announced that the director and two lead actresses were to be jointly awarded the festival’s top honor.
While the head of the jury, Stephen Spielberg, claimed politics played no role in the decision, the director of the festival, Thierry Fremaux, cited the traditional marriage march in Paris as one reason why the film was timely. He urged attendees at the march to watch the film.
"Everyone who is against same-sex marriage or love between two people of the same sex must see the film," he told Reuters.
Two recent studies have found a connection between pornography use and support for gay ‘marriage.’
One review of 500 men over six years found that “pornography consumption did prospectively predict support for same-sex marriage,” according to an abstract of the study.
Indiana University Assistant Professor Paul Wright, the researcher behind the study, speculated that because pornography “adopts an individualistic, non-judgmental stance on all kinds of non-traditional sexual behaviours,” those who watch it are far more likely to look positively at homosexual sex, and therefore gay 'marriage.'
However, University of Texas sociology professor Mark Regnerus first mentioned the link between porn and gay "marriage" last December in The Public Discourse. Surveys from Regnerus' New Family Structures Study showed that 54 percent of men aged 23-39 who watched porn “every day or almost every day” strongly agreed that gay and lesbian marriage should be legal.
A mere 13 percent of those who viewed explicit material monthly or even less shared those views.
Heavy viewers of pornography were also far more likely to believe “marriage is an outdated institution” and that homosexuals parent as well as heterosexuals. Some 63 percent of heavy users agreed with the latter statement, versus 26 percent of the lightest consumers.
