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Porn Use Higher in Red States, Study Shows

More Internet pornography is consumed in states with conservative, highly religious populations than in states with more liberal populations, a new study claims. Benjamin Edelman, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, conducted a nationwide study using two years of anonymized credit-card receipts from a major adult entertainment provider. The receipts included a purchase date and the customer's ZIP code. According to Edelman, Utah is proportionately the biggest consumer of online porn, with 5.47 subscriptions for every 1,000 home broadband users; Montana's rate is the lowest, with 1.92 per 1,000. The study also showed that 27 states with laws that ban gay marriage have 11% higher subscription rates than states without laws against gay marriage.

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Chris Hall
February 27th, 2009
Chris Hall's picture

Chris Hall is a perverted nerd who has been known to administer severe spankings to writers who confuse "its" and "it's." He keeps one foot in San Francisco and one in Brooklyn and his mind permanently in the gutter. He's the co-founder, with Elizabeth Wood, of the website Sex in the Public Square.