New Scientist reports,
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 interesting feature of these data is that even after they are corrected for demographic differences, they show that Utah is far and away the biggest porn subscriber, whereas Idaho ranks at the bottom of the scale. The interesting thing about this is that Utah and Idaho both have large Mormon populations-- Utah is 58% LDS, and Idaho is about 23% LDS. Do Utah's depravity and Idaho's prudery have anything to do with their Mormonness?
"One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you're told you can't have this, then you want it more," Edelman says.
Over at Mormon Matters, Orchard thinks the vast discrepancy in porn use between these two unusually Mormon states suggests that Mormonness may not have anything to do with it. I'd like to offer a somewhat different interpretation. One possible reason for the differential between Idaho and Utah is the difference between LDS as a religious subculture and LDS as a religious superculture. In Idaho, LDS are strong enough to have good support networks and a strong community identity, but weak enough to be something of a counterculture. Under such conditions, religiosity and rebellion against the status quo can actually be allies. In Utah, where LDS are a strongly dominant superculture, rebellion and iconoclasm take the form of porn use.
I think it is historically quite demonstrable that religion remains truer to its values when it remains an alienated minority standing in opposition to a dominant, even hostile superculture. It is when religion forfeits alienation for power and respectability that moral values degrade, religiosity erodes, and secularism gains strength.
So what can Mormons do to fight rampant porn use in Utah and improve activity rates? Simple: stop running for president, disband the "Gathering," and encourage Utah's Mormon residents to scatter themselves in a great Diaspora across the nations. (Well, okay, maybe not so simple.)
4 comments:
Your final comment reminds me of a joke that I really like. Mormons are a lot like manure. When you spread it thin it makes things green when you pile it up it just stinks.
I lived in Utah while I went to school and I hated it. I was probably as spiritually inactive there as I've been in my life.
I also think this is a sad state, but not really that surprising, it is a topic that come up repeatedly at conference in the Ensign and other areas. Pornography is a big problem.
I saw this last week and we discussed in my LDS history class when we were talking about achieving Zion.
Sad, really.
Interesting you should mention "achieving Zion," Joseph. If Max is right that you have to spread Mormonism thin or else it stinks, then it would seem that Mormonism is allergic to itself, so to speak. The Mormon ideal is an all-Mormon paradise on earth, a "Gathered" kingdom of God. But when the Saints are "Gathered", their morality is actually undermined and their behavior is less paradisaical than it would have been had they remained ungathered. In other words, it is in the nature of the utopia to self-destruct.
You're right; it's sad. The way the world works definitely sucks sometimes. We get so close to doing something magnificent, we taste perfection, but it remains always just out of reach.
Utah is a lightning rod for anti-Mormon sentiment. Might not the surplus subscriptions actually be going to anti-Mormon households? This could be a 'rebellion effect.' I recall a case of a woman, I believe it was in West Jordan, who insisted on her 'right' to wear extremely revealing clothing while she was out gardening in her yard. This was against the protest from her neighbors, whom she regardes as prudish. Another time folks in the office where I worked bought a Playboy as a gag gift for a co-worker. Afterwards we intended to discard the Playboy but a vigorous protest ensued by a non-Mormon doctor who insisted we give it to him since we would not be needing it. Some folks insist that Utah doesn't allow the public to 'act adult' and they then seek every opportunity to differentiate themselves from the Mormon mainstream on that basis.
Post a Comment