Perhaps the social and religious conservatives who compose the base of today’s Republican Party aren’t as out of touch as we thought. Sure, they’re wrong on the issues and are essentially clueless about what most Americans need and want, but at least they’re not out of touch with their own genitalia.
As it turns out, folks who live in red states tend to get their digital freak on more than residents of blue states. A new study finds that Republican voters spend more time and money on online pornography. You hear that noise? It’s the sound of Republican moral authority groaning under the weight of its own hypocrisy.
The results of the last elections, underscored by President Obama’s impressive approval ratings, strongly support the notion that Republicans are comprehensively losing the war of ideas even more than they lost the battle for educated votes. Americans are at long last calling Bullshit! in ever growing numbers.
While Michael Steele tries to keep it real and Michelle Bachman brushes up on her Ebonics, ultra-conservatives and right-wing hangers-on while away their days at Camp Kuckoo, becoming even more out of touch with the reality that is modern America. However, when it comes to online pornography, it seems holier-than-thou Republican voters are progressive in at least one way: they’re hornier than the rest of us.
“When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different,” says Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School.
However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.
“Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by,” Edelman says.
How do we explain the hypocrisy? Is it the I subscribe to Playboy for the articles argument, writ large? Or maybe the old yarn about the censor having to view a stag film six times before deciding it was obscene? Of course it isn’t. Generally speaking, Republicans are just as kinky (or even more so) than those they judge to be immoral. The difference between these smut loving Republicans and equally frisky Democrats is simple: by and large, we believe that consenting adults should be able to express their sexuality however they see fit. Some right-wing Republicans, on the other hand, have no qualms whatsoever telling women they have no reproductive rights. Even after they’ve admitted, on national radio no less, to raping a mule. Is beastiality a family value?
To be sure, Democrats have endured their fair share of sex scandals, but the Republicans really are a league unto themselves. How about that family values Senator from Louisiana, the one prostitutes dubbed “Vitter the Shitter” on account of his diaper fetish? There’s Sen. Larry “I’m still not gay!” Craig, Florida State Rep. Bob “I Love Hookers” Allen (McCain’s state co-chair), and that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
I can’t help but think that “social conservative” often means little more than “sexually repressed”. While conservative anti-intellectualism and unfettered greed have proven to be among the foibles most devastating to the future of the GOP, I used to think that the simple hypocrisy of Do as I Say, Not as I Do would eventually destroy them.
Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year’s presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama.
That certainly helps explain the Sarah Palin phenomenon, yes? I’m guessing they saw the perfect blend of piety and porn in a single well-dressed package. The fact that she’s an expert in foreign policy (she can see Russia) and energy policy (successfully operates a desk lamp) were gravy.
I’ll wager that many a McCain voter loved Sarah Palin because their lizard brain told them she’s got the Alaskan librarian, let-your-hair-down, take-her-on-the-tundra thing going on. She even had the bad porno acting down. Anyone feeling starry eyed?
Since the 1980s, the Republican Party has used “family values” to attract socially conservative voters, and have spent decades constructing morality based wedge issues that feed on xeno- and homophobia. We need look no further than the passage of Proposition 8, a heinous and hateful measure that eliminated same-sex couples’ right to marry, to see that the wedge still works – even in blue California.
For almost 30 years, Americans have listened to the conservative right lecture them about their support for traditional marriage (i.e. opposition to same-sex marriage), the virtues of abstinence education (see Palin, Bristol); their opposition to adultery (see Gingrich, Newt), and their discipline when it comes to traditional, moral, and religious commitment.
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.”
Uhhh, okay. For the longest time, I thought Republican politicians were simply duping social-conservatives with their phony family values facades. With results like those documented in this study, I wonder who’s duping who? We’ve got a whole lot of Republican leaders who lie about what they are, and the people who vote them into office are lying too. Honestly, how do we begin to take these people seriously?
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