Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Pornography and the Bible Belt
Praise the Lord and Turn on the X-Rated Video
Interesting numbers. In the March 3rd edition of NY Times, Charles M. Blow wrote about online adult entertainment and where the buyers came from.
A study by Benjamin Edelman, an assistant professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, titled “Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?” and published in the most recent issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives found that subscriptions to online pornography sites are “more prevalent in states where surveys indicate conservative positions on religion, gender roles, and sexuality.” |
The tables clearly illustrate that when it comes to pornography, members of the holier than thou moral values brigade have a hidden side to their persona.
Some of the findings quoted by Mr. Blow:
- 1. In regions where more people report regularly attending religious services, overall subscription rates are not statistically significantly different from subscriptions elsewhere.
- 2. Subscriptions are slightly more prevalent in states that have enacted conservative legislation on sexuality (regression results on file with the author). In the 27 states where “defense of marriage” amendments have been adopted (making same-sex marriage, and/or civil unions unconstitutional), subscriptions to this adult entertainment service are weakly more prevalent than in other states ( p 0.096). In such states, there were 0.2 more subscribers to this adult web site per thousand broadband households, 11 percent more than in other states.
- 3. In states where more people agree that “Even today miracles are performed by the power of God” and “I never doubt the existence of God,” there are more subscriptions to this service.
- 4. Subscriptions are also more prevalent in states where more people agree that “I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage” and “AIDS might be God’s punishment for immoral sexual behavior.”
- 5. 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.
