Red States: "Porn Is So Dirty, We Can't Get Enough Of It"

The New Scientist takes a closer look at pornography consumption by those who loudly profess to be shocked, shocked by dirty pictures:

[S]tates 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," [Benjamin] Edelman [of Harvard Business School] says. ...

Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election.

And where do the nation's biggest consumers of porn live?

Where else? Utah, which probably thinks of itself as the most exquisitely pure and moral place in God's Own Country.

All of this is of course wholly consistent with the Larry Craigs and Ted Haggards of this world going cruisin' for cock, and with the fact that the strictest Muslim nations lead the global pack in google searches for the word "sex."

As Andrew Sullivan wrote a few years ago:

Islamism, like Christianism, doesn't conquer sex; it just fetishizes it and forces it underground.

Happily, devout Christians are somewhat successful in suppressing their boners on Sundays:

Church-goers bought less online porn on Sundays — a 1% increase in a postal code's religious attendance was associated with a 0.1% drop in [porn] subscriptions that day.

Here's something to help them cope on the Lord's day:

Comments

[Joe]

This seems like a nonsequitor to me. Couldn't it just as easily be that the causal relationship's the other way around? That is, the states with the highest rate of porn consumption have the strongest reaction against it, because people see its negative consequences?

New Scientist's (and your) explanation might be right, but I don't see how this data shows that.

Suppose people in Pennsylvania disproportionately favored alcohol prohibition, and Pennsylvania also had an exceptionally high rate of alcoholism (or simple consumption). It seems to me that it would be just as plausible to say that people affected by alcohol consumption tend to favor prohibition as it would be to say that people who favor prohibition tend to consume more alcohol. In fact, more plausible, because the more generalized variables correlate.

(I oppose prohibition of both alcohol and porn, btw. This post just seems unreasonable to me.)

[Joe]

Even if there is a "forbidden fruit" phenomenon at play, where people in a socially conservative state that frowns on porn consumption are (causally) more likely to enjoy porn, it doesn't follow that the same people who frown on porn consumption are the ones the phenomenon makes more likely to consume it. It could be that generation X frowns on it, so generation Y is more likely to use it because of FFP. Or religious majority X frowns on it, so irreligious minority Y is more likely to use it.

[Joe]

Happily, devout Christians are somewhat successful in suppressing their boners on Sundays:
Church-goers bought less online porn on Sundays — a 1% increase in a postal code's religious attendance was associated with a 0.1% drop in [porn] subscriptions that day.

Of course, this completely avoids the statistical fact necessary to draw a conclusion from this: what effect does a 1% increase in any several-hour activity outside the home on Sundays have on the rate of Sunday porn consumption in the state?

[benpal]

"because people see its negative consequences". Negative consequences? Consumption of pornography (what is pornography anyway?) appeals to imagination and senses by graphically depicting what most people do anyway, even though some prefer to switch off the lights. Sexual activity is enjoyable, but for whatever reason some just don't want to admit that they are enjoying it, so they are trying to "hide" it from their own view. Seeing is admitting, is facing reality.
I have never understood what is bad about sexuality.

[Rogier]

Joe:

I'd be more favorable to the statistical possibility you raise if it wasn't for Packwood, Condit, Craig, Haggard, Vitter, Thomas, Spitzer, Bennett, Foley, plus thousands of child-raping Catholic priests, bishops, and cardinals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jay_Report ), and so on.

Obviously, rather a lot of people who love to go on moral crusades against behavior they profess to abhor are only too keen on indulging in it themselves, as long as they think everyone is looking the other way.

In addition, as a corollary issue, I assume you know that the ten states with the highest divorce rate are all red ones. Do you believe that the people who staunchly defend the sanctity of marriage in those places have stronger marital bonds than everybody else? Do you think that, to reframe your argument, "the states with the highest rate of divorce have the strongest reaction against it, because people see its negative consequences"? If so, the thrice-married Newt "Family Values" Gingrich has some lightly used marriage-counseling books he'd like to sell you.

There's plentiful tantalizing evidence suggesting that the prevalence of porn consumption is as great, and probably greater, among Christian conservatives than among other groups.

Have you tried googling? Some particularly amusing stories to start you off:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0825/p14s01-lire.html
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/?pageId=73940
http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/currenttrendscolumns/leadershipweekly/cln50919.html

As a 2007 post at pastorblog.com reminds us, "A poll of 1000 Christians showed that 50% of Christian men are addicted to porn." (See http://www.pastorblog.com/2007/06/06/50-of-christian-men-addicted-to-porn/)

And I think another 40 to 50 percent may be addicted to serious fibbing. ;-)

[Joe]

Benpal, you ignore my point because you disagree with one part of one possible hypothesis I offer. But even your answer to that begs the question.

Rogier, anecdotal evidence is statistically meaningless, but it's especially meaningless here, where the only time a story revealing porn use is notable enough to draw public attention is when it involves a Christian/conservative.

[Rogier]

I hope you're not serious. In my post above I even LINKED to this piece:

http://www.bakelblog.com/nobodys_business/2006/05/searching_for_s.html

I also specifically mentioned Elliot Spitzer above, and wrote about that fork-tongued a-hole last year: http://www.bakelblog.com/nobodys_business/2008/03/oddly-eliot-spi.html (Spitzer may be not a porn fiend, but surely he's a sexual hypocrite on the same scale as Vitter, Craig, et al). You do know that Spitzer's a liberal, right?

So you're going to have to do better than alleging, wrongly, that I only have it in for Christian conservatives.

Take this in (http://www.crosswalk.com/668518/ ): "Focus on the Family says one out of seven pastors who call its toll-free help line say they are addicted to pornography. Promise Keepers reports that one-third of the men who attended PK rallies in 1996 admitted to a personal struggle with pornography."

Tell me how these numbers (based on self-reporting, which by definition means severe UNDER-reporting when it comes to 'shameful' behavior) are immaterial.

And maybe you could answer my question about red states' divorce rates. And maybe explain to me how evidence that there are more than four thousand child buggerers in the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S. alone (see the John Jay report) can be dismissed as a mere anecdotal trifle. And maybe also clarify why polls showing that fifty percent of Christian men say they have a porn addiction are "statistically meaningless."

Thanks.

[Phelps]

Meh, it doesn't say anything about porn CONSUMPTION, just about who is PAYING for it. I like to think that us heathens are just a little smarter about finding the free porn out there.

[markm]

More precisely, it only says who is paying for porn over the internet. IOW, make it difficult to buy Penthouse in the stores and more money gets spent on internet porn...

But personally, I lean towards "religious conservatives are too stupid to find all the free porn out there".

[Joe]

I should've been more specific; I meant the only time a story revealing porn use by an individual draws mainstream media attention is when it's use by a Christian/conservative. There may be exceptions to this, but I can't recall any, and I don't think you've pointed to any here? Regardless, I'm pretty sure any exceptions are a minute minority.

Use of prostitutes, being illegal, is of course newsworthy when politicians of any stripe partake.

I certainly didn't say you had it in for C/Cs.

The surveys you mention aren't anecdotal, so I'm not sure how they're a response to what I said, and they're certainly relevant. But the only way they support your thesis in the post is if you're sure that they represent a larger proportion of Christians than would be represented among the general population. I'm sure those numbers are smaller than actual percentages of Christians who use porn, but I'm also sure that more than 1/7 or 1/3 of the general population also uses porn.

[Joe R.]

If you read the original study, and not the New Scientist's shameful misrepresentation, you find that the study author did not find the data showed that conservatives consume more porn. The study separated by state, but there's no way of knowing who in that state actually bought the porn. It's possible that in conservative states, a more restricted market leads more people online. Or that liberals are less likely to pay for porn. I'll quote the last two paragraphs from the study directly:

"I experimented with a number of other variables, but did not find statistically significant results. In the 13 states that forbade sodomy immediately prior to Lawrence v. Texas (2003), subscriptions to this adult entertainment service are more prevalent than in other states, but insignificantly so. Furthermore, I found no significant relationship between subscriptions to this adult entertainment service and presidential voting in 2004, based on poll data by congressional district. However, using individual-level data from a Hitwise sample of ten million anonymized U.S. Internet users, Tancer (2008), finds that adult escort sites are more popular in “blue” states that voted for Gore in 2004, while visitors from the “red” states that voted for Bush in 2004 are more likely to visit wife-swapping sites, adult webcams, and sites about voyeurism.

On the whole, these adult entertainment subscription patterns show a remarkable
consistency: all but eleven states have between two and three subscribers to this service per thousand broadband households, and all but four have between 1.5 and 3.5. With interest in online adult entertainment relatively constant across regions, there’s little sign of a major divide."

Shameful, shoddy reporting by the New Scientist. I guess the "new science" doesn't involve reading or math.

[hermesten]

Come on, all you have to do is actually know a few of these so called "conservative" Christians to realize what a bunch of hypocrites they are. I don't see how anyone who has ever associated with this group could be surprised by this.

I'm sure there are people who really believe all their religious BS but there are large numbers of people who flock to the "Church" so they can wrap themselves in the mantle of "morality" --a term which I use loosely, since I've seen no evidence that radical Christians have any but the most stunted concept of morality.

[Darrell Birkey]

What the study actually shows is Republican perverts are willing to pay for their porn while Democrat perverts feel entitled to free or stolen porn...