Other than those of us with our eyes, ears and minds open - who could have guessed that conservative Americans would be frantically shrieking about the immorality of David Ogden's Deputy Attorney General nomination out of one corner of their mouths while madly salivating over internet pornography out of the other?
According to a recent - and widely discussed - study on the subject, conservatives indulge in online pornography more than liberals!
Clearly, this flies in wild contradiction of the moralistic ideals loudly proclaimed by members of the GOP and those whose political views are too conservative to fit under its allegedly big tent.
Or maybe not. After all, one of the most successful methods used by conservative churches to fill their pews during the past few years has been to "debate" or merely lecture about the evils of porn, its allegedly addictive nature - and its pervasive existence even among the godly.
And then there is the hall of conservative and neo-conservative heroes who've been found doing everything from renting time with call girls to making time with male hustlers to tapping out come-hither code in men's bathroom stalls to dying while trussed up in a rubber diving suit complete with a ball gag in one end and a dildo in the other.
So, really, other than the demographic in question, who's surprised?
Benjamin Edelman, an Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, is the social rocket scientist who was able to point out the obvious, taking two years worth of anonymous credit card data from 2006 - 2008 and paying close attention to the purchase dates, products bought and area codes associated with the cards. What he found was that, after taking into consideration both population and how primitive some areas of the more socially conservative area's tech access is, there isn't that much of a difference between adult purchases in the various states.
What that means, is that people in Utah are just as likely to want to buy a silicone dildo or watch the latest Jesse Jane flick as people in California. Heck, if the numbers tell the truth, people in Utah are even more likely to not merely want to do those things but actually go about making them happen!
Which is all very strange, of course, when you realize that eight of the 10 states that managed to reach the top of the adult online purchase heap are states that enthusiastically supported Sen. John McCain's recent failed bid for president.
Ironically, although McCain's state didn't make the Top Ten - his comely but six of the bottom 10 states went for current President Barack Obama. Pretty funny, given that a 2007 Zogby International survey found that those who responded believe that it's atheists sucking all the bandwidth out of the internet in pursuit of fleshly pleasures.
But it's okay, because even though the nice, closeted people of faith who enjoy sexy stuff may surf for it on a regular basis, they take the Sabbath off to focus on other things - like attending those Porn & Pancakes get-togethers the absexuals from XXXChurch.com love to take on tour, for instance.
Edelman doesn't speak words unuttered before when he opines that "One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you're told you can't have this, then you want it more."
Another hypothesis is merely that people all over the world enjoy sex - regardless of how much some of those people try to spin doctor the truth. Obviously, a fair number of them live in conservative states and take advantage of the broadband opportunities made available by godless technology.
Ironically, but not terribly surprising, is the fact that Edleman found that the 27 states with laws against same-sex marriage also have an 11-percent higher chance or subscribing to an adult website than the supposedly anything goes inhabitants of more queer-friendly states. Furthermore, states with residents who tended to agree that they "have old-fashioned values about family and marriage" tended to buy 3.6 more of those subscriptions per 1000 people than did states who didn't identify as quite so "old-fashioned."
The results were roughly the same for those who believe that "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behavior." Hopefully those surfers are online with with latex gloves, dental dams, condoms and rosary beads at the ready.
Of course, given that the most porn-loving state in the country appears to be Utah - you know, the state with the anti-porn "child protection registry" law and a burning, bleeding loathing for same-sex marriage, there won't be much bead rattling. In fact, the states with the highest appreciation for the internet's adult bounty are decidedly non-Catholic, with six of the top 10 being firmly Baptist.
You know, the religion that seems to have the loudest lung capacity when it comes to shrieking about the alleged ills associated with enjoying the sensual pleasures of modern life.
So, Utah, Alaska, Mississippi, Hawaii, Oklahoma, Arkansas, North Dakota, Louisiana, Florida, West Virginia - we in the adult entertainment industry thank you for your patronage, but you won't get any prizes for integrity or honesty. At least not from me.
Perhaps someday those states can rise above their self-imposed shame and stop lying to their local and national legislators about what they do and what they think of people who do what they do. In the meantime, we're stuck with constant insults and attempts to stifle the very speech that so many of us obviously enjoy - and both Michael and Sami Harb of Movies By Mail get to spend time in a Utah court defending themselves in front of a judge and jury that may very well have ordered videos from them - but may prefer to hand down a mega fine or prison term instead of admitting as much.
All because, as Edelman points out, "Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be customers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by."
Now, that's outrageous.
Originally published on YNOT.com