Inspired by Somini Sengupta's New York Times article, Is Public Romance a Right?, Vikrum Sequeira compares societal attitudes towards public affection in India and Latin America.
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Some food for thought…
Two Kiss in Church, Are Ejected
People were angry at this outright desecration of the church.
Mexico hotel ejects two men for kissing
A gay couple was tossed out of a Los Cabos resort hotel for sharing a kiss in the pool.
Gay man stopped for kissing in public in Britain
A gay man has complained after he was approached by a security guard who told him to stop kissing another man.
Moscow considers kissing ban
“Our children are getting love lessons all day long from what they see around them,” Ms Maksimova said.
Indonesia to ban kissing in public
Travellers caught kissing in public in Indonesia could face five years in jail. A new anti-pornography bill proposes a ban on “kissing on the mouth in public” and on “public nudity, erotic dances and sex parties”.
http://www.seiyaku.com/customs/kiss.html
# First, public kissing is frowned upon by Japanese (and Chinese and many other cultures). It is seen as bad etiquette to do certain private activities in public. Conversely, loudly slurping food is not considered impolite in those countries, although it sends westerners insane. The world would be much poorer if we didn’t have these cultural differences. What all the different human cultures do agree on though, is that homo-sapiens are one cut above other animals, and having ‘rules of etiquette’ is one way of showing this. To break one of these ‘rules’, for example kissing in public, is considered bad form.
# Secondly, although kissing is a very natural activity (as explained above), many people in the East believe it was an import from the West. To use a kiss in a wedding ceremony in Japan is to show that the couple chooses to use a style that is thought to be non-Japanese, giving perhaps a more exotic image to the ceremony. (See western-style wedding in Japan for suggestions about why people choose this style of wedding.)