Do I really need a web framework?

[dufriz at gmail.com]

I want to set up a very simple website, and I need to know if it is necessary to use a web framework (e.g. Django) to do basic interactive operations such as receiving input from the user, looking up a database and returning some data to the user.
I know that this is exactly the purpose of web frameworks, and that they work fine.
However, I read somewhere that for small projects such operations can be managed without a web framework, just by using Python with mod_python or with the CGI module. Is this correct? 

What do you suggest, keeping in mind that I am a newbie and that my website project would be very simple and very small?

Thanks