Liberating the Libertines

REUTERS, Sept. 15 — The liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein's regime has ended all manner of “repression,” according to Reuters, including government restrictions on pornography, which is now flooding the country.

The market for other forms of cinema has dried up, the news service reported, as Iraqis (mostly male) fill the theaters for “romantic” (soft-core) and “sexy” (hard-core) films.

“Under Saddam, forget it. You would go to jail for showing or watching this,” aficionado Mohammed Jassim told a reporter, standing before Baghdad's Atlas Cinema, which was showing a film called Real Raping.

Some Iraqi Muslims have responded proactively to the imports: In the Shi'ite city of Basra, Reuters noted, the city's three cinemas “closed for two weeks after young men on motorbikes turned up warning that if they showed ‘sinful’ movies they would be burned down.” When the theaters reopened, the porn films were gone.

Catholics Fight Divorce Law in Chile

THE NEWARK STAR-LEDGER, Sept. 15 — Local Church officials in mostly Catholic Chile are struggling against the odds to keep the government from legalizing easy, American-style divorce, The Newark Star-Ledger noted.

New legislation passed by both houses of the Chilean legislature, still open to amendment, would permit divorce for the first time. Catholics are trying to keep current marriage law, passed in 1884, in line with religious values.

Father Jaime Fernandez, who heads the Vicariate for the Family in Chile, supports amendments that would require a three- to five-year “cooling off” period before a divorce is granted. “Everything should be done to avoid this rupture,” Father Fernandez said. “We know that when couples are angry they do things that aren't thought out.”

He also backs a provision — favored by 71% of Chileans — allowing engaged couples to make their marriages divorce-proof, or indissoluble. Father Fernandez cited a wide variety of American studies demonstrating higher suicide, drug use and crime rates among the children of divorce.

Drug Prevention Conference Meets Near Rome

FIDES, Sept. 12 — The fifth annual Global Drug Prevention Conference was to be held from Sept. 22-26 near Rome, reported Fides, the Vatican missionary news service.

One scheduled speaker was Archbishop Javier Lozano Barragan, president of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral of Health Care Workers.

The conference was intended to increase awareness of the destructive power of illegal drugs and prospects for eliminating them — in accord with the U.N. Convention on Illegal Drugs — and to forestall ill-advised attempts to legalize narcotics.