Okay, warning: I'm veering out of the usual songwriting territory and veering into pure politics, but I saw this and I had to comment. Does this surprise anyone? It seems there are studies on everything these days, and the subject of this particular study was on the popularity and consumption rate of pornography from state to state, using anonymised credit card data from a major online adult entertainment provider as the criteria.
"When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different," says Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School.
However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.
"Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by," Edelman says.
Typical. I'm so not shocked by this news I may not pass out and hit my head on the floor. Those that decry the evil pornography the most are those that are using it more than anyone else. If this was just a simple question of human foibles and harmless hypocrisy, that would be one thing. But this is a much deeper issue than that.
Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don't explicitly restrict gay marriage.
To get a better handle on other associations between social attitudes and pornography consumption, Edelman melded his data with a previous study on public attitudes toward religion.
States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behaviour."
Did you get that? States that claim a moral superiority to gay and lesbian Americans and vote to enact legal bans on their relationships, consume more porn than the "morally inferior" people they legislate against. And not just a little more, 11% more. It's not just hypocritical, it's unconscionable. And AIDS might be a punishment from God for immoral sexual behavior? Is this 1988? (read, "is this the Stone Age?") These porn-guzzling maniacs had better be keeping close tabs on their own health, lest God decide to smite them as well.
And which state is the biggest consumer per capita of pornography in the Union? Utah. Where the Mormons are. Probably the largest contributors to the soon-to-be-overturned Proposition 8 in California.
You can read the article I'm quoting here, and you can download the study itself here.
A few weeks ago I read about another study in AM New York – to which I had the same sarcastic reaction of “Wow – what a shocker – and they needed a study to find this out.”
The people in you Utah would have to look inward for this study to have any impact. Sadly, that’s not going to happen. The Mormons and the Christian Right will never look beyond their value system and always find a way to justify their “values.” In a way I pity many right wing people, not because they are hypocrites but because they hate themselves. If they are looking at porn - they are probably beating themselves up for it.
That’s a lot hate – and probably too many Hail Marys and Our Fathers said as penance.
Posted by: grimaldi.frank@gmail.com | March 05, 2009 at 09:18 PM