A new study took a look at which states consume the most online porn and guess what -- Red State America is praying, then straying online. Benjamin Edelman of Harvard Business School analyzed customer credit card data and zip codes from 2006-2008 and matched it purchases at dozens of adult websites.
After controlling for differences in broadband internet access between states - online porn tends to be a bandwidth hog - and adjusting for population, he found a relatively small difference between states with the most adult purchases and those with the fewest.
The biggest consumer, Utah, averaged 5.47 adult content subscriptions per 1000 home broadband users; Montana bought the least with 1.92 per 1000. "The differences here are not so stark," Edelman says.
Number 10 on the list was West Virginia at 2.94 subscriptions per 1000, while number 41, Michigan, averaged 2.32.
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.
...Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don't explicitly restrict gay marriage.
You know what this made me wonder? Over the last few days, DC has been flooded with wingnuts attending CPAC. Do you think the purchase of in-room porn, escort traffic and gay bar attendance spiked with the kind of people who have "old-fashioned values about family and marriage?"
Speaking of Utah, did you hear the latest about Chris Buttars and Co.?
Hat tip, JMG.
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12 Comments
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The link to Pam's site doesn't work ....
emurks | March 2, 2009 4:37 PM
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sweet justice. lmao.
ewe | March 2, 2009 6:48 PM
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As much as I'd like to think it's those hot missionary-boys sitting in their rooms logging on to Bel Ami, I suspect it's mostly non-Mormons who would find more open outlets for their interests in places with less repressive cultures.
tristram | March 2, 2009 9:58 PM
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"hot missionary-boys sitting in their rooms logging on to Bel Ami"
Ha ha ha ha ha! What an image!
Prince Gomolvilas | March 4, 2009 12:53 PM
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Here's the corrected URL for Pam's article on the latest news about Buttars & Co. in Utah:
http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=9709
Abby | March 3, 2009 1:35 AM
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Then again, if you lived in Utah, what else would you be doing?
Alex Blaze | March 3, 2009 7:44 AM
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I'm shocked.
*giggles*
Bil Browning | March 3, 2009 9:34 AM
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Despite the Mormon Tabernacle sitting right there in the center of downtown, Salt Lake City actually does have an active G&L business community, enough that their version of the target="_blank">gay yellow pages gets printed every year.
Outside of SLC, however, I gather that Utah is mostly a desert ... both geographically and culturally.
A. J. Lopp | March 3, 2009 1:26 PM
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Oops! Screwed up the HTML for my link. I'll try again:
The Q Pages, Utah
A. J. Lopp | March 3, 2009 1:29 PM
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I agree with tristram. It's not that I don't think that the folks who want to "legislate morality" don't then go looking at gay porn -- I sometimes suspect they want that legislation because they can't control the world inside of them, and so feel the need to control the world outside of them. But my guess is that a lot of that porn consumption is by people who don't share the state's dominant morality, and don't have as many outlets as they would in other places. I don't look at online porn much, but I live in New York City. I go to sex parties instead. I imagine in Utah, I might look at porn.
Aviva | March 4, 2009 11:57 AM
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The thing they fail to mention, is that there are not other places in Utah to get hard core porn. Any other state you can walk into a gas station and grab a playboy, but you can't do that here. The internet is one of the few places in Utah that you can access things like that. There aren't even any full nude strip clubs, so naturally when people want to see those things in Utah, they have to look for them on the internet. Funny how they don't mention that in the article huh? In this article you also didn't mention the towns where the numbers were highest... The few towns where the numbers were the highest were places with just a few thousand population, mostly out in the middle of nowhere. So there are a few pervs living out in the boonies who like to look at porn. So what? This doesn't mean that they are members of the LDS church. Or that they are anti-gay, or anything like that. Gotta love the biased articles you come across... sheesh.
Stormy | March 16, 2009 11:46 AM
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there is a huge, rarely discussed problem with porn and mormon men. when my children were in elementary school (they are adults now), i knew several mothers who confided in me that their husbands and sometimes their sons were addicted to porn. everytime this topic comes up in the main stream media, the church dismisses it, and no one talks about it for awhile. so many really unhealthy behaviors surround mormonism in utah..but are rarely talked about. seems that utah mormons are a totally different breed than mormons in other states. must be the proximity to 'mecca'
bonnie | December 9, 2009 9:56 PM
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