A new study of the consumption of pornography in the the USA discovers that people who are right wing and religious tend to consume rather more of the stuff than people who are not.
Basic law of economics. If you try to ban something, people will buy more of it.
Update: Henry Farrell thinks that New Scientist has been rather free with its interpretation of the data. Had it been a newspaper, I would have suspected that, but I’m disappointed in New Scientist.
Gotta love the just say no crew – unless, of course, it’s for themselves. *sigh*
No wonder the quality of 21st Century porn is so woefully low. In the 1970s when left wing couples and freaks were watching it, porn took itself a lot less seriously and was more fun.
I’d have to say it’s also the basic law of right-wing religious conservatives: we have to scream about it loudest, because we most fear our own desire for it.
I’d think that both being religious and conservative and the amount of porn an area buys might be correlated with the average amount of sex residents in an area have (though I’ve done no study on that).
In which case, it might be an indication of strong moral values, since I’d think (non-procreative) sex is worse than masturbation (at least that’s what my headmaster taught me).
Rahkan:
That was part of my point. If you discourage people from having actual sex then they will try to make up for it by reading porn.