After controlling for differences in broadband internet access between states â online porn tends to be a bandwidth hog â and adjusting for population, he found a relatively small difference between states with the most adult purchases and those with the fewest. The biggest consumer, Utah, averaged 5.47 adult content subscriptions per 1000 home broadband users; Montana bought the least with 1.92 per 1000. "The differences here are not so stark," Edelman says. Number 10 on the list was West Virginia at 2.94 subscriptions per 1000, while number 41, Michigan, averaged 2.32. Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election â Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama. 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 behaviour." "One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you're told you can't have this, then you want it more," Edelman says. http://people.hbs.edu/bedelman/papers/redlightstates.pdf http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16680-porn-in-the-usa-conservatives-are-biggest-consumers.html
Now if only they could measure the proportion of outwardly homophobic conservatives who are also consumers of gay porn...