Porn in Utah? Oh my GOSH! It can't be true....

Utah: Online Porn Capital Of The USA

It's kind of fascinating that Utah turns out to be the highest per capita consumer of online porn!

A Harvard Business School study has compared two years of online porn purchases with the zip codes attached to the purchasers' credit cards.

"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. The biggest consumer, Utah, averaged 5.47 adult content subscriptions per 1000 home broadband users; Montana bought the least with 1.92 per 1000. Number 10 on the list was West Virginia at 2.94 subscriptions per 1000, while number 41, Michigan, averaged 2.32.

I found this bit of the story the most interesting:

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 behavior."

It's also interesting that Utah also has the highest teenage pregnancy rate.

There are good people in Utah. And a growing number of non-Mormons. But you can't blame the porn and the teen pregnancy on the non-Mormons and the jack-Mormons!

That means there are a bunch (more than the average of other states) of good church-going Mormons that look at porn! And I know there's a lot of pressure to look and act and make everyone think that they're living up to some high standard. That's the hypocrisy. And the hypocrisy of the Mormon church leaders. They stick their heads in the sand and are just way out of touch with reality!

Thanks Joe for the story!