Nobody had any choice: the law is the law.
The BBFC's hands are tied by the 1978 Protection of Children Act, and Arrow's hands are tied by both that and the 1984 Video Recordings Act (which requires all fiction features to be BBFC-approved, which in turn requires them not to contain material that's potentially illegal).
In my own experience, when stuff is as legally open and shut as this, the BBFC is very helpful indeed, and almost always ends up letting more through than I'd expect them to - for instance, with the bestiality incident, they said that the final shot was OK because although the dog was still visibly, erm, excited, he was no longer physically touching the woman. I suspect if it had been purely down to me I'd have blacked that one out as well, just to be on the safe side.
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