Examiner.com- The gods of hypocrisy work in mysterious ways, often revealing grim, sad truths about ourselves and those to whom we have looked for leadership and guidance. But sometimes those very same (metaphorical) gods can show something of a sense of humor, and today they have proved downright hilarious.
A new study by Harvard Business School (with a hat tip to P.Z. Myers) shows that culturally conservative states are America's biggest purchasers of Internet pornography.
I know, I love it too.
It turns out that the ultra-red Utah was #1 in online porn subscriptions, and eight of the top ten porn-loving states voted for John McCain in 2008.
But it gets even better. Enjoy this little nugget from the report:
. . . subscriptions are also more prevalent in states where surveys indicate conservative positions on religion, gender roles, and sexuality. 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. 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.”
Yes, it's okay to love every moment of this.
But I would like to take the schadenfreude up one more notch. For indeed, why is this admittedly-delightful information appearing in a column on secularists and nonbelievers?
In 2007 Zogby International conducted a survey on American prejudices in which respondents said they believed their fellow Americans to associate atheists with Internet porn surfing more than any religious group. (p. 19) While this is not the same as saying that Americans themselves associated nonbelievers with the-web-browsing-that-must-not-be-named, it is a correlation that Americans assume their neighbors are making. (Think of it as a "Do you think America is ready for a member of group x as president" kind of question.) And it is no secret that atheists and the nonreligious are consistently demonized as immoral and hedonistic, without any data to back up the charge.
Atheists, skeptics, and the like are groups that place their trust in facts over stereotypes, evidence over assumptions, and proof over prejudices. So before our opponents make claims about our behavior in order to marginalize us within the culture, they might want to look at the numbers first.
And maybe their own credit card bills, too. That stuff's gotta get pricey after a while.
Side note: All of this is not to say that these flesh-ogling conservatives are completely unaware of their naughtiness:
. . . in such regions, a statistically signi?cantly smaller proportion of subscriptions begin on Sundays, compared with other regions. . . . This analysis suggests that, on the whole, those who attend religious services shift their consumption of adult entertainment to other days of the week . . .
At least they know they're being bad.
