Taking the moral lowground….
As FX said, the problem is that the US has a very strong fundamentalist/Puritanical bent that has resulted in periods of heavy restraint (say, the 1950s) balanced by periods of repressed energy escaping (say, the 1960s).
While it is true that there is more common expression of outrage over excessive violence in media than sexuality, that is simply because most people see sexuality as healthy and a natural part of life (note, DT, I said *most* people), while excessive violence is generally seen as ugly and brutal. Unfortunately, though, the people who are organized enough to lobby advertisers and networks with threats of boycotts are fundamentalist religious groups who believe that everyone should share their view that the human body (and its functions) is an ugly, shameful thing (which goes back to the religious stance of these people). This is why sexuality is frowned upon in media: not because the majority of people are bothered by it (most people, I’d say, aren’t), but because of the fact that threats of boycotts and petitions from these fundamentalist groups have made advertisers and networks gunshy. If they fear “bad publicity” from the likes of Rev. Donald Wildmon and his American Family Association (whose sole purpose, it seems, is to force networks to kowtow to their own idiosyncratic ideas of what kind of pablum the American people should be fed), then they’re not going to take any chances, and will instead pull punches. Movie studios, who don’t really have to answer to advertisers, have (for the most part) escaped the influence of these groups because (A) the studios are large enough to be able to ignore them, (B) they know that people will still buy tickets, which will make them money *anyway* (ratings don’t get networks more money — they attract advertisers, who provide more money, but who are sensitive to petitions and boycotts), and (C) the studios can always say that they’re only providing what the public wants.
Contrary to an above statement, it’s not that the networks don’t want to “give people nasty offensive images that they don’t want to see.” If people didn’t *want* to see them, then R-rated films would sell no tickets. People would patronize more gentle fare, the demand would shift to G-rated (or soft PG) films, and more of these films would be made. It’s not because of public demand. It’s because of the relationship between networks and advertisers, and their being influenced by the actions of a handful of zealots with too much time on their hands and too much dogma in their heads.
(And I’m not even getting into the nasty bit of business that is the FCC, as we’re primarily talking about venues like the Sci-Fi Channel, which is a cable network, and not subject to the regulation of the FCC — this is why Comedy Central was able to show an episode of [i]South Park[/i] that featured the word “sh*t” over 100 times.)
–Aleck