Sexual Revolution’s Tide Ebbing in the World Capital of Permissiveness

Here in the world capital of permissiveness, the tide of the sexual revolution has begun to ebb.

Marriage is staging a comeback in Sweden, abortion and teen-age pregnancy rates are low and a public outcry over pornography is growing.

Attitudes are still relatively permissive, sex expert Maj Fant says, but they are enlightened by sex education. And, she said, more and more Swedes seem to cherish faithful and close relationships.

“Sweden was regarded a bit like Sodom and Gomorrah, with free sex and easy girls,” said Fant, secretary of the government-sponsored National Assn. for Sexual Information.

Desire Healthy

Now, she said, the hundreds of ordinary Swedes she speaks with weekly view sexual desire as healthy but feel that “what’s important in a relationship is to be responsible and show consideration.”

At the same time, Swedish authorities have clamped down on extreme forms of the sexually permissive society. They outlawed live sex shows four years ago and are now considering a ban on the sale of violent pornographic videotapes.

The government undersecretary of social affairs, Monica Andersson, says Swedes “have a general consensus on sex and living situations”--a consensus, the specialists say, that good sex does not necessarily mean free sex.

Motivated by this message, Swedish youths seem to deal with sex better than the young people of other countries, according to a 1985 study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit, Washington-based research foundation affiliated with Planned Parenthood.

Abortions Down

Abortions here declined 12% from 1980 to 1985, the study shows, and the teen-age pregnancy rate was only a third of what it was in the United States in the same period.

The institute credits Sweden’s ready availability of sex information and contraceptives. Also, Swedish teen-agers are not morally condemned for sexual relationships and can conduct them openly and maturely. Even some liberal bishops in the dominant Swedish Lutheran Church, such as Per-Olov Ahren of the university town of Lund, accept premarital sex in responsible relationships.

Fant says that information and contraceptives have been important, “but I also think fidelity is a factor in handling sexual relationships maturely. I’ve noticed a great difference when I’ve visited schools.”

She estimates that she meets about 300 people a week in sessions at schools, labor unions, libraries and elsewhere, and deals with other people’s problems through correspondence.

AIDS Fear

Fant said that fear of AIDS--the sexually transmitted acquired immune deficiency syndrome--also has discouraged promiscuity, although the disease has not been nearly as widespread here as in the United States. As of Aug. 1, AIDS had stricken 62 Swedes and killed 35 of them, the government’s bacteriological laboratory reported.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, spurred by cheap and available contraceptives, rocked the institution of marriage here. By the early 1980s about 20% of all couples living together were not married. That proportion is holding steady, though in 1985 the number of marriages increased by 6%.

“Many people want to make a statement that they have strong ties and aren’t simply cohabiting, although legally there’s not much difference,” Fant said. “It’s more important to have a long-lasting relationship because the world is so unsafe with wars and disasters.”

Public attitudes toward pornography, which was legalized in 1970, have changed markedly.

Few Sex Clubs

Because of popular pressure, live sex shows were banned in 1982. Stockholm Police Inspector Torsten Englund says that sex-oriented nightclubs have all but disappeared.

Last February, a government commission proposed a ban on rental or sale of violent pornographic films for home videos.

Some food-store chains have been boycotting pornographic magazines. And in the last year, protesters staged demonstrations outside a hard-core pornography shop.

Campaigning against pornography, a group of women in Smaland province, in central Sweden’s so-called Bible belt, mounted an exhibition of art with sexual themes to help teach Swedes to distinguish between good erotic art and purely exploitative, dehumanizing forms of sexual entertainment.

Art Versus Pornography

“People have a need for sexual pictures, and it should be filled with something better than pornography,” said Margareta Niklasson, a spokeswoman for the group, the Vaxjo Action Group Against Pornography, which obtained local government financing for the art show.

“It’s difficult to make definitions,” she said, “but erotic art asserts sensuality and a feeling of affinity with your partner as a human being.”

Fant said that Swedes were naively idealistic, unaware of pornography’s dark side, when it was legalized.

“Pornography leads to an anti-human society because it destroys relationships by distorting the view of the opposite sex,” she said. “Pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice.”

School Groups

The exhibition has been extended so that school groups can visit it on field trips. “All kinds of people come,” Niklasson said. “We would like people to discuss it at home and explain to their children about good sex.”

Despite progress, problems remain. The number of reported rapes in Sweden has remained steady, at just below 1,000 a year. And vice detectives say that the level of prostitution, which is legal, also appears unchanged.