Now I know why the states are red. lol!!!
 

Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers
16:18 27 February 2009 by Ewen Callaway
Americans may paint themselves in increasingly bright shades of red and blue, but new research finds one thing that varies little across the nation: the liking for online pornography.

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.

Political divide
Edelman spends part of his time helping companies such as Microsoft and AOL detect advertising fraud. Another consulting client runs dozens of adult websites, though he says he is not at liberty to identify the firm.

That company did, however, provide Edelman with roughly two years of credit card data from 2006 to 2008 that included a purchase date and each customer's postal code.

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.

Old-fashioned values
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."

"One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you're told you can't have this, then you want it more," Edelman says.

Journal reference: Journal of Economic Perspectives vol 23, p 209 (pdf)

THis part cracked me up.

"Porn in the USA, Porn in the USA" - Springsteen

:lol:

This study has holes in it big enough to drive a bus through. Well, a hatchback.

It is possible that the porn users in Utah are the (few) non-religiuos types who can't get the porn of their choice in shops due to the lack of porn shops, and so turn to the internet at a higher rate. Maybe.
But I like the conclusion that is suggested.

HA! Yes, possible, but unlikely. Utah, home of the Mormons and polygamy, but only men get the benefit of having/screwing more than one spouse. Hypocrisy much? That is one messed up religion. It's no wonder that they would consume more porn. And, it's a proven fact that repression causes deviant behavior. I wonder how much more kiddie porn is consumed somewhere like Utah than the national average? I mean, they do force young girls to marry old geezers.

FTR, unlike the most recent HBO series wants you to believe, the Mormon church denounced and outlawed polygamy a long time ago. The only ones that practice it are extreme break away groups like Warren Jeffs group. It is a sterotype to believe it.

The closest thing in Big Love to make you want to believe otherwise is a possible letter that proves the denunciation of polygamy was, at the time, intended to be temporary. But none of the LDS members in the show are polygamous, and the main characters aren't LDS.

That said, the polygamy in the Old Testament is essentially the same as original Mormon polygamy, so it was messed up in a fairly normal way in that respect.

The word is, there's quite the enthusiasm in Utah for married couples to watch their porno together. Presumably they then tend to anything that comes up.

Oh I wasn't talking about the show. I did some research on polygamy a few years ago (quite a few years ago). There are lots of polygamous people in Utah. And yes, compounds like the one on the show do still exist. There have been arrests and children taken into custody over the past few years, not just in Utah. In fact, I believe the show is probably pretty accurately researched, in that respect.

But I was really just making a crack. Maybe I need to use the smiley face icon more. Sometimes when I'm being sarcastic people think I'm serious.

Eh, I get that all the time. Most people miss it for me as well. Since we know each other you read me better than most. Now bend over.
:whip:

And it's still widely practiced throughout the world:

ohhhh, promise to spank me hard? :D

Fer chrissake, will you two get a room? :p

Waaaaait. Is there some sort of... sexual tension between Merc and sugarpop? I'm confused.

We have known each other for years.