A surge in the number of sex shops as a result of law changes might not happen, according to local industry leaders who believe customers are likely to shy away from walking into a shop rather than purchase online.

The possibility of sex shops sprouting up across the island was raised in the wake of a set of proposed legal amendments unveiled on Wednesday. The draft legislation, focused on “moral laws”, proposes doing away with regulations that make the selling of pornographic and sexually-explicit material illegal.

Ranier Zammit, owner of popular online sex store ToysFourPlay, believes the legislation is not likely to lead to any changes in the prevailing situation.

“It’s very debatable whether opening such a shop would be successful. I don’t know how viable it is to sell such products from a retail outlet, I mean, other than for the very few who have no internet access,” Mr Zammit said. He said many of his customers would probably feel uncomfortable walking into a store for fear of being spotted or labelled perverts.

“Malta is basically a small village compared to larger cities abroad. The mentality doesn’t really lend itself to such things,” he said, adding that Maltese “adult tastes” reflected international trends.

James Attard, who owns online sex shop Pleasure House, also felt Maltese customers would shy away from patronising a physical sex shop. “I can’t imagine that would be very successful. If you walk down the street for five minutes, you bump into five people you know. Imagine bumping into someone after you had just been shopping for a sex toy,” he said.

Even those who had previously spoken out against the industry were convinced the legal amendments would not lead to a rise in sex shops.

Mosta mayor Edwin Vassallo, who had spoken out against the removal of censorship of sexually-explicit content when he was a Nationalist MP back in 2010, said sex shops were “superfluous”.

“I don’t think we’ll see a lot of these shops opening. Times have changed since I spoke out about the issue. Back then, the social media wasn’t what it is today. Sex shops are past their expiry date. They’re superfluous,” he said.

Justice Minister Owen Bonnici last week described the reform as a sign that the government did not believe it should be the public’s moral custodian. He had said it was time to “start treating adults like adults”.

Sex shop ‘side effect’

The possibility of sex shops opening is an “unintended side effect” of the legislation, according to a lawyer who helped draft the reform.

Andrew Sciberras said the main aim of the reform was to liberalise artistic expression. “We didn’t have sex shops in mind. We wanted to have the same freedoms for those involved in literature and other art forms as are afforded to film and theatre,” he said.

Dr Sciberras said the amendments were prompted by a handful of cases in which artists had been found guilty of offending public morals due to explicit content of a sexual or pornographic nature. In 2009, author Alex Vella Gera and editor Mark Camilleri were arraigned for offending public morals through the publication of a sexually-explicit and crude short story in university news­paper Realtà. They were cleared.

Dr Sciberras said the reform was intended to do away with restrictions that led to artists facing criminal proceedings. The reform would also liberalise something which has long been overlooked by law enforcers: sexually-explicit magazines sold in book shops.

Dr Sciberras said that, although it was common practice for stationers and book shops to sell pornographic magazines, these were technically breaking the law.