Conservatives and Pornography

Conservatives might outwardly oppose pornography but they are the biggest consumers. New Scientist reports:

A new nationwide study (pdf) of anonymised credit-card receipts from a major online adult entertainment provider finds little variation in consumption between states.

“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.

Utah is the biggest consumer of porn. Purchases of porn did correlate with election results:

Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year’s presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama.

Of course this doesn’t mean that church going conservatives skipped church to buy pornography. They just held off until another day:

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 subscriptions that day. However, expenditures on other days of the week brought them in line with the rest of the country, Edelman finds.

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.”

4 Comments

  1. 1
    nomoreGOP says:

    This might be the most amazing study ever published. I am so sick of these NEOCON HYPOCRITS! A guilty party always over-compensates. These mormons in Utah must love them some gay porn.. They love it so much they dumped millions of dollars to make sure gays can’t marry (apparently they are only allowed to make more porn for Mormon pleasure).

    And yes that was stupidly over-generalizing and all that.. but you get the just of it…

    ps- by “mormon” I mean [conservative] porn purchaser. I figure if Jindal can just make shit stuff up.. why can’t I? 🙂

    I am so sick of this “No Big Government” LIE. How is telling a woman she can’t have an abortion small government? How is telling a family member they can’t pull the plug on their family member that has been in a vegetative state for years small government?

  2. 2
    Ron Chusid says:

    Small government? You are just as likely to get small government from Republicans as you are to see the state whither away under Marxism.

  3. 3
    mrstan says:

    I find it interesting how the liberal minded people seek ways to bash conservatives and vice-versa.  The state of our country is like going to a football game: We root for "our team" no matter what they stand for or actually provide us.  I see liberals who will vote and mouth to the Democrat cause and vice versa as well.. just to "jab" the other side.  It is a sad state of affair to see this.  I want the powers that be to fulfill the needs we have instead of being simply a team to be :"rooted for".  That just makes me sick.  These two posts here reflect this mentality clearly.

    The facts are that our country needs to be balanced between our social needs and programs as well as being fiscally in order and having morals and regulations that we all follow as a society.  Today it seems we all are either a loony liberal or a stanch un-relenting conservative.  I am curious is this is somehow related to the shrinking middle class which is the result of both of these groups which compete for their dominance?  I wonder if these "mouths" actually realize the damage they do to our country?.. or care for that matter… As long as "their team" wins or succeeds, who cares, right?  I remember most people being in the middle, looking at both of these ends as the crazy left and right… but now, we in the middle are getting fewer and fewer it seems.. and that just can not be very good for all of us.

     

    Just my 2 cents.

  4. 4
    Ron Chusid says:

    With the conservatives moving so far right in this country, seeking to be in the middle makes one pretty conservative. There is nothing admirable about lacking a viewpoint of your own and seeking to be in the middle of two other groups, or accepting the false equivalency that each side is the dame.

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