QC FYI: Surprise, Surprise… Conservative “Red” States Love Online Porn Most

According to a new Harvard Business School study entitled, Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?, eight of the top ten states in terms of online porn consumption were ones where McCain won in the last presidential election. Professor Benjamin Edelman analyzed anonymised credit cards receipts from a large online porn company. Based on their limited data, the largest consumer is Utah.

“Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by,” Professor Benjamin Edelman says.

Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don’t explicitly restrict gay marriage.

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 behaviour.”

“One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you’re told you can’t have this, then you want it more,” Edelman says.

Well, we can’t say we’re surprised that the people who financed Prop 8 are also the biggest consumers of porn. What do you think? Do repressive societies turn their citizens into masturbating freaks or is online porn a form of rebellion?