Is It Sex Education or Plain Ol’ Porn? : Culture: The British are learning more about making love thanks to explicit videos that some say circumvent anti-pornography laws.

As the video begins, a very sober-looking doctor named Elizabeth Stanley appears on camera and lists her academic credentials, covering 23 years of studying and teaching human sexuality.

It’s all very authoritative and dull, and most viewers would probably yank out the tape right there if they didn’t know what was coming next. . . .

But of course they do know what’s coming next or they wouldn’t be watching.

Dr. Stanley goes on to profess her concern about certain attitudes toward sexuality these days: “Sadly, sex seems to have become a performance, to be marked out of 10 for achievement,” she intones. “With those kind of attitudes, forget good sex--especially in a long-term relationship.”

Finally, she starts the ball rolling toward the real point of the video.

“I’ve also found,” she says, “that the shared experience of watching sexually explicit material can really help that key ingredient to good sex--good communication. This is why I believe that watching this program, ‘Making Love,’ could be of value to you.”

And sure enough, after a couple more minutes of serious clinical lecturing, Stanley disappears and--presto!--the action switches to graphic scenes of great-looking couples having sex.

“Making Love” is just one of a rapidly growing number of show-all sex education videos that are commandeering the video sales and rental charts in Great Britain, where hard-core sex films are otherwise strictly forbidden.

For the first time, the British can legally buy videos that show people having sex, as long as the videos are certified to be for educational purposes.

As a result, millions of Brits are suddenly clamoring for more sex education.

Since September, 1991, when the first sex education video appeared, more than 1 million tapes have been sold, earning about $20 million. Industry experts expect those figures to double during the next year. Rental shops report a brisk business in sex ed videos as well, including “The Lovers Guide,” “The Essential Guide to Better Sex,” “Supervirility” and “The Gay Man’s Guide to Better Sex.”

“Because they earn so much money for us,” says an assistant manager at 20th Century Video here, “every time a new one comes out, we get it.”

Although this surge of sexual frankness is applauded in many quarters--including the British government’s Department of Health--it also has detractors. They say the “educational” imprimatur is merely a loophole that allows profit-minded video producers to sidestep pornography laws.

Others, while favoring sex education in general, question whether explicit sex tapes are being purchased purely for intellectual enlightenment. They believe-- could this be possible?-- that some people are buying the videos just to watch the sex scenes.

Indeed, one newspaper columnist argued that the tapes couldn’t really be about teaching sex education because “anybody who needs to be taught how to masturbate is going to be right out at sea when it comes to mastering the controls on a video machine.”

Fueling suspicions about the real market for the videos was the recent arrival of “The Essential Guide to Better Sex Part 2,” which was shot in 3-D, a form not universally recognized as an educational tool. To stay within its British educational brief, however, the producers include pairs of 3-D glasses only in cassettes sold outside the United Kingdom.

Most of the educational videos follow the same basic format: A sex expert appears on camera and talks about the importance of good sex in relationships. Some also include footage of couples engaged in non-sexual activities, such as working out in the gym, chatting on the couch or even cleaning up the kids’ toys. As all this happens, a narrator imparts words of wisdom about togetherness, understanding and similar themes.

Soon, the mood changes. The music may swell, the lights may dim, the setting may become distinctly more romantic. But, most significantly, the couples launch into passionate, often exuberant, sometimes positively acrobatic sex.

Although the couples never talk, the narrator rarely stops. Consequently, viewers hear an off-camera voice all through the sex scenes, either describing what the couples are doing or providing general sex chat. Sometimes, the voice acts as a cheerleader.

“Throw away your inhibitions,” implores the unseen narrator of “Making Love” as the camera observes a couple melding into a tangle of body parts. “Give into your curiosity with excitement and tenderness.”

A varied sampling of sexual themes are also discussed and viewed. “The Lovers Guide,” for example--the first of the genre and by far the best-selling--says on its cover that topics include arousal, overcoming shyness, sensual massage, exploring and pleasuring each other, fantasy, making love, sex positions, contraception and keeping sex alive.

All this sexual glasnost is proving bewildering to the police. Detective Supt. Michael Hames, head of Scotland Yard’s Obscene Publications Squad, lashed out recently, telling the Sunday Times of London: “Turn the volume off and just watch the action--as I am sure most people who buy these tapes do--and what have you got? Pure porn.”

After listing a number of sex acts that he said would normally make a film illegal under the law, he added: “Yet all this goes on in ‘educational’ videos. I am not sitting in judgment, trying to say what is or is not legal. I’m simply saying these videos make the law look like an ass. We want to know what the law says is or is not pornography, because at the moment, we don’t know.”

If the local police are puzzled by British obscenity laws, a visitor from America would certainly be baffled.

Unlike the United States, the United Kingdom has effectively banned hard-core sex videos and magazines. But on the other hand, Americans in Britain might well be shocked to see what is permitted on the nation’s four television networks during prime time. In some cases, the British networks have broadcast sex scenes that probably would not be shown on American cable networks.

The British appear to give more consideration than Americans do to the context in which sexual images are displayed. British guidelines do not prohibit any particular activities from being depicted. Instead, the law looks at what effects the images are likely to have on viewers.

“Our law never describes what the things are that are illegal,” says James Ferman, director of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). “Something is illegal if its display has a tendency to deprave and corrupt those who are likely to encounter it. It’s not a test of what’s offensive, it’s a test of what’s harmful.”

No film or video can legally be sold in Britain without being certified by the BBFC. Until the arrival of “The Lovers Guide” last year, few films showing real sex acts were ever certified.

Then a video production company called Lifetime Vision approached the BBFC with its idea for an explicit sex education film. The board said “no problem at all,” recalls William Campbell, a Lifetime executive. The only stipulations were that couples had to be shown in loving relationships and that the film had to be shot in “an educational fashion.”

Lifetime hired a noted sex education expert, Andrew Stanway, to write the script and to act as on-camera presenter. They showed the script to the BBFC and received its approval before taping.

The video was an instant success and a new industry was created.

Campbell is dismayed by suggestions that his company is just trying to make a bundle by putting out porn dressed up as sex education. “Obviously, we’re in it on a commercial basis,” he says. “But we have a real desire to help as well.”

Lifetime, which has a new hit in “Lovers Guide 2,” is planning to bring its films to the United States soon. But getting the “Lovers Guide” videos onto the shelves in respectable sales outlets is not going to be easy. “There’s been considerable resistance in the U.S.,” Campbell says. Because of that, the tape will probably be sold at first through mail order.

Meanwhile, Campbell, like other producers of sex education videos, insists that a great percentage of his tapes are sold to women. But it doesn’t appear as if women are much interested in renting them.

At 20th Century Video, Assistant Manager Graham Allan says the rental market for the tapes consists of “the same middle-aged men who used to (rent) soft-core porn videos. Now they rent these. The soft-porn (rentals) have even slowed down.”

Concedes a Department of Health spokesman: “It’s quite likely there are viewers whose attention is not fixed on the educational aspects of these films. But we hope they pick up something.”