Virginia GOP House of Representatives Candidate Shares His Love For “Amateur Anal” Porn

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While Republicans and their Christofascists supporters continue their hysteria over transgender restroom use and anti-LGBT agenda and anti-sex agenda, Mike Webb, a Republican candidate in Virginia’s 8th District has underscored the hypocrisy of the GOP by posted a photo on Twitter that accidentally includes a glimpse of his pornography tastes.  Once again we are reminded that it is almost always those most concerned about what happens in other peoples lives and bedrooms who are the ones that you most need to worry about and/or who are flocking to online porn sites.  The Daily Caller looks at this case of another "family values" Republican.  Here are excerpts:

Mike Webb initially ran as a Republican for the 8th District seat, which covers Arlington and Alexandria and is considered safely Democratic. He lost the nomination, though, and is now running as an independent, though he is, to say the least, unlikely to win.

Webb published a post on his campaign page Monday that included a screenshot of his computer desktop. And as it happened, Webb hadn’t bothered to close his pornography tabs when he took his screen grab.

“IVONE SEXY AMATEUR” may have a completely innocent meaning, but a quick Google search indicates the video is featured on RedTube and other very X-rated websites. Similarly, Layla Rivera is a porn star. Something about her is apparently tight, and it probably isn’t her relationship with her father.

Interestingly, even though Webb’s pornography gaffe was spotted within a few minutes of the picture going up, as of press time the post remains active an unedited.

One truly cannot make up stuff this good!

The Mormon Church's "War on Pornography"

Gail Dines - Mormon ally

Recently, I noted that an effort was underway in Utah to outlaw pornography - even though Utah has the highest rate of  subscriptions to Internet porn sites in the nation.  Shortly thereafter, an op-ed appeared in the Washington Post that sought to argue that pornography is a "public health crisis" supposedly because porn encourages violence against women, etc.   It turns out that one needs to hear the rest of the story as Paul Harvey used to say.  The author of the op-ed, Gail Dines, is described in a piece in The Atlantic as a self-identifying radical feminist and “anti-porn advocate,” who sees male aggression under ever bush (admittedly, being gay, I don't exactly watch straight porn, but Dines' claims in the piece struck me as more than a bit extreme).  Moreover, she has been in league with the Mormon Church and its political puppets. Here are excerpts fro the piece in The Atlantic which looks at the bizarre alliance of these unlikely forces:

To sociologist Gail Dines, a self-identifying radical feminist and “anti-porn advocate,” these findings added to a body of evidence that she deemed conclusive. Dines believes that non-coercive pornography cannot exist in a capitalist society, where sex-based media will always lead to an industry that becomes a violent manifestation of structural inequalities. In The Washington Postthis weekend, Dines wrote a column that spread widely: “Is Porn Immoral? That Doesn’t Matter: It’s a Public-Health Crisis.” The divisive proclamation was occasioned by a bill passed last month in Utah declaring pornography to be “a public-health crisis.” The bill, like the phrase, traces back to Dines, who has spoken and lectured on the evils of pornography around the world. Dines made the same argument to legislators in the U.S. Capitol Building, at an anti-pornography summit. There she reached an unlikely confederate, a Republican state senator from Utah named Todd Weiler. A blonde, 48-year-old divorce attorney, Weiler returned to his home state to champion the bill. When the text of the bill made it to the Internet, Weiler recalls, it “went viral” and he was “immediately inundated with criticism.” This was, in part, over contentious claims being presented as simple fact, like “WHEREAS, pornography use is linked to lessening desire in young men to marry, dissatisfaction in marriage, and infidelity.” For facts and science, the senator directs me to a Utah-based group called Fight the New Drug. (The new drug is pornography.) The group’s “Facts” page offers much in the way of terse declarative aphorisms; such facts as “Porn hates families,” “Porn leaves you lonely,” and “Porn addiction escalates.”  The group denies a formal affiliation with the Mormon church, though as journalist Samantha Allen notes, its founders are all Mormon, and its facts rely on claims from Mormon author Donald Hilton’s He Restoreth My Soul: Understanding and Breaking the Chemical and Spiritual Chains of Pornography through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Olson and company sell the ideological argument as a “just the facts” approach. Less transparent than an openly ideology-driven strategy, the just-the-facts approach is rather a just-some-of-the-facts approach. Comparisons of drugs and porn have proven less clear-cut than suggested by the intuitive leap that all dopamine-based reward systems must be different degrees of the same thing. While drug abuse is perennially among the leading drivers of morbidity and mortality, the American Academy of Psychiatry has repeatedly deemed evidence insufficient that sex and porn addiction be recognized as mental disorders.  [R]esearcher Nicole Prause . . . found in another study that watching pornography did not seem to kill love, but rather increased people’s likelihood of being aroused by other media, and increased the desire for sex with their partners. The journalist Maria Konnikova recounted last year in Aeon that when Danish criminologist Berl Kutchinsky charted sexual aggression in the two decades after Denmark and Sweden legalized pornography, the crimes did not increase in step with pornography distribution, but actually declined. This suggested to him that pornography was an outlet for sexual expression less than a driver of problematic real-world behavior.  While Dines and others cite many correlations between pornography consumption and negative health outcomes, the causal relationship is rarely explicit. Making that leap is especially tenuous when studies rely on subjects recalling and reporting information about taboo behaviors and thoughts, a notoriously unreliable approach.

In my personal view, what really causes porn use is sexual dysfunction stemming from religious brainwashing that makes normal human sexuality into something vile and dirty that must be repressed. The resulting self-hate and sexual repression are the real triggers for porn use and fulfilling relationships.  Look no farther than the Catholic priesthood or the Bible Belt with its high divorce rate, high teen pregnancy rate, and volumes of false piety to see the fruits of psyche killing religious dogma.   

Utah’s Hypocritical War on Porn

A favorite pass time of mine on this blog is focusing on hypocrisy.  Nowhere does hypocrisy intersect more than with conservative strains of religion and politicians who sell their souls to religious zealots and extremists.  Typically, hypocrisy is at its highest in the Bible Belt where despite feigned religiosity, one finds the highest divorce rates, the most teen pregnancies, the highest effort to slash the social safety net, and high Internet porn usage.  But there is another state where one sees similar hypocrisy: Utah, home of the Mormon Church where Internet porn usage is off the charts.  Like political whores elsewhere, Utah politicians have launched a campaign to save the states sexually repressed and sexually frustrated citizens from themselves waging war on Internet porn.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the rank hypocrisy.  Here are excerpts:

In a unanimous vote, the Utah House of Representatives passed a resolution this week branding pornography a public health hazard; a crisis its citizens need to be protected from.

The resolution calls for “education, prevention, research, and policy change at the community and societal level in order to address the pornography epidemic that is harming the people of our state and nation,” but does not offer any solutions. This from a state that ranked number one in online porn subscriptions, according to a 2009 Harvard study.

Renowned New York City sex therapist Dr. Stephen Snyder says the availability of internet porn is not any more of a problem than other socioeconomic issues Americans today face, including stagnant middle class wages and the continued decline of the two-parent household. “Any time you put limits on what can be communicated about sex, you increase the potential for sexual shame—which let’s face it, is already pretty high for most Americans even under the best of circumstances,” says Dr. Snyder. “And whenever you increase sexual shame, you’re going to see an increase in compulsive sexual activity, whether it's compulsive porn use or any other kind. Shame is rocket fuel for compulsions.”

The heavily-Mormon state seems to have a love-hate relationship with pornography, and a sense of shame over it as well. Here, the desire for porn has also birthed a plethora of anti-porn groups to combat the evils of consumption. On March 12^th, the Utah Coalition Against Pornography held its 14^th annual conference in Salt Lake City. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the LDS church, was one of its keynote speakers—and likened porn to the plague.

“Pornography ought to be seen like a public health crisis; like a war; like an infectious, fatal epidemic; like a moral plague on the body politic that is maiming the lives of our citizens,” said Holland . Concerned for future generations, anti-pornography groups like the Utah-based non-profit, Fight the New Drug lecture at high schools on pornography’s so-called deleterious effects. Unfortunately, no one seems to be lecturing about STDs at these same high schools. Are the perceived dangers of pornography worse than the threat of STDs?

In lieu of sex-ed, most of Utah’s schools continue to offer abstinence-only programs and prohibit public school teachers from encouraging contraceptives, which could be why chlamydia was the most frequently reported communicable disease in Utah in 2011. Two-thirds of those cases were among 15 to 24 year olds.

However, Utah Senator Todd Weiler isn’t advocating for the expansion of sex-ed. He instead wants policies that further protect underage consumers from pornography, admitting in the resolution he’s spearheaded that “exposure to pornography often serves as childrens’ and youths’ sex education and shapes their sexual templates.” Porn should not fill those educational voids abstinence-only programs create, but in the absence of information, unfortunately, it does. When kids have questions no one will answer they don’t head for a stack of well-worn encyclopedias—they search for it online.

“People like to preach their religious ideologies about family values, saving the kids, and making sure they still have good moral fiber which they say porn destroys, but I could make the same argument for social media,” says adult actor Derrick Pierce. “Those same kids that are told sex is bad, don’t do it, it’s only for reproduction, when those kids get older and figure out they can make their own choices, they do and they make them tenfold because they want to know what all the fuss is about.”

Weiler’s resolution is “a half-measure and a diva-esque attempt to grab headlines” says award winning adult performer and director, Tanya Tate. “If Weiler were truly committed, he would look at Harvard’s 2009 study that found Utah’s religious residents were the nation’s top consumers of online porn and work on religion and the reason it drives so many in his home state to explore porn,” says Tate.
  

Is "Sex Addiction" a Myth?

It seems that so many times when a right wing, "family values" Republican or a member of the professional Christian crowd gets caught in a sex scandal, they immediately claim to suffer from "sex addiction" and run off to some loony "Christian" ministry to get "cured."  Nasty pig Josh Duggar is but one recent example.  But does "sex addiction" really exist?  A piece in Salon noted that it is NOT in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Yet the godly folk and their political whores in the GOP seem to use it constantly as an excuse for their bad behavior. Too me, the real truth may be that those who use the excuse are merely masking their rebellion from sexually obsessed conservative religious dogma and constantly repressed sexual urges that find little outlet except via porn or adulterous affairs (or molestation of altar boys if one is a Catholic priest).  Here are highlights from the piece:

Porn addiction does not appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. And yet the label seems to pop up everywhere. There are counselors who warn against the addictive nature of pornography. Anti-porn advocates have been quick to blame the industry for the degradation of human relationships. And others have begun advertising treatment plans to remedy the “disorder.”

There are individuals who lose hours — even days — to pornography. There are also a number of individuals who have spent all their money on porn products and escorts. That’s a real problem. Compulsive behavior patterns are a real problem. And those consumed by them need professional help.

What’s curious, however, is that these individuals don’t seem to make up the majority of self-identifying “porn addicts” out there.

Joshua Grubbs of Case Western has been examining the concept of porn addiction for the past five years. He told AlterNet, “I noticed that people, particularly religious people, were really quick to use the addiction label. They were really fast to say, ‘I’m an addict, I’m an addict, I’m addicted to this. I can’t control myself.’ And I started to think, ‘Well, something’s not adding up.’”

He added, “You know how hard it is to convince [an addict] that they have a problem? They don’t just come out and say, ‘Oh, I’m an addict.’ They don’t do that until they’re in recovery.”

So when are these labels most likely to come up? And by whom are they assigned? Some experts suggest that the concepts of “porn addiction” and “sex addiction” are used to explain away behaviors condemned by socially (and sexually) conservative societies. Think about celebrities like David Duchovny and Tiger Woods, and what led them to come forward with their “addictions.” Dr. Mark Griffith writes, “It becomes a problem only when you’re discovered.”

Grubbs suggests most self-identifying “porn addicts” simply don’t meet a clinical criteria.
In January 2015, he published research finding that religiosity tended to be more closely related to porn addiction than porn consumption itself.

“Porn addiction, sex addiction are so closely related to religious and moral beliefs about sexuality,” Grubbs says. “If you’re coming from a religious tradition that says that indulging sexual desires outside the confines of heterosexual committed marriage is wrong, any sexual impulse that you have that doesn’t fit that prescribed criteria is going to produce guilt and distress.

“Conceptually, it would make sense that it’s easier to say ‘I’m an addict’ than to say that what I believe about sex is maybe not the healthiest belief.”

[W]e went to Amazon to check out its selection of books on “porn addiction.” No fewer than 404 results popped up in the Religion & Spirituality category. Less than half that number appeared in the Psychology & Counseling section.

Grubbs and his team found that the “psychological distress” caused by porn addiction relates to the label itself, not the material it refers to. According to his research, identifying as a porn addict was likely to bring on feelings of depression, anxiety, anger and distress. Porn use itself had no “reliable relationship” to these symptoms.

Clinical psychologist David Ley, author of “The Myth of Sex Addiction,” told AlterNet in an email, “Decades of research shows that sex and porn are not addictive. Instead, the notion of porn addiction reflects people’s moral and social fears of sex.”

Grubbs says, “Ideally what we’re doing now will help people change their approach to treatment. Just because someone identifies as a porn addict doesn’t necessarily mean you need to treat them like an addict. You need to treat them like someone who is experiencing a lot of self-stigma.” 

I continue to view deep ultra conservative religiosity as a form of mental illness. Claims of "sex addiction" might be better described as symptoms of "post-traumatic church syndrome" since the real root cause of the guilt and anxiety is insane religious brainwashing.

 

The Bible Belt = Obese Porn Watchers

The disconnect between what Christian fundamentalist say and demand of others and what they actually do is once again in sharp display in the results of two new studies.  We hear these "godly folk" constantly shrieking about the evils of pornography and condemning others for sins that are a matter of "choice" - gays, of course are a favorite target on the latter.  Meanwhile, these folks who live in the Bible Belt use more online porn than anywhere else in America and seemingly lack the ability to make the choice to not shovel another fork full of food into their mouths (perhaps they eat while perusing online porn?).  The sin of gluttony is apparently an unknown concept to this falsely pious folk.

As MSN News reports, the most obese states are, with only two exceptions, located in the Bible Belt with Mississippi leading the way in the most obese state for the second year running:

Most people get psyched when they earn a distinction two years in a row, but we’re guessing Mississippi residents aren’t thrilled with this one: According to findings from a new Gallup poll, the state has the highest obesity rate in the nation for the second year running. The poll found that more than 35 percent of Mississippi residents are obese, trumping runner-up West Virginia by nearly a whole percentage point.

Obesity rates have continuously been highest in Southern and Midwestern states and lowest in Western and Northwestern states, per Gallup.

Yep, it's the awful liberal states so decried in the Bible Belt where folks seemingly have enough "personal responsibility" to put down their forks. 

On the issue of pornography, Patheos looks at the results of a new survey that suggests that while the godly folk are sitting in the pews on Sunday, they may actually be planning their next foray into online porn.  Here are highlights:

Religious conservatives in the Bible Belt search for online porn more than anyone else according to a new study published earlier this month.

The new study, published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior and  produced by researchers from Canadian Universities, found that American states with more religious conservatives search more for sexual content on Google.

Researchers used Google Trends to analyze porn searches while linking state level information from Gallup polls asking about religious and political attitudes together with a variety of sex and porn-related search terms.

The following is an excerpt from the study’s Abstract:

(researchers) examined associations between state-level religiosity/conservatism and anonymized interest in searching for sexual content online using Google Trends (which calculates within-state search volumes for search terms). Across two separate years, and controlling for demographic variables, we observed moderate-to-large positive associations between: (1) greater proportions of state-level religiosity and general web searching for sexual content and (2) greater proportions of state-level conservatism and image-specific searching for sex.

[T]he Canadian researchers offer “the paradoxical hypothesis that a greater preponderance of right-leaning ideologies is associated with greater preoccupation with sexual content in private internet activity.”

While one can only speculate as to why there is such a strong connection between the consumption of porn and professed conservative Christian values, multiple reports indicate similar findings concerning the Bible Belt’s apparent voracious appetite for pornography.

The hypocrisy of it all is stunning.  But hypocrisy is, of course a hallmark of fundamentalist Christians.

Google Backtracks on Porn Ban on Blogger

As noted in a prior post, Google - which owns the Blogger platform used by this blog and countless others - had announced that come late March, all porn would be banned from blogs using Blogger.  Blogs not following the ban would be forced to private, by invitation only blogs.  Now, Google is rapidly backtracking after receiving "a ton of feedback" raising hell over the decision (I can't help but wonder what percentage of the complaints came from the Bible Belt which leads the country in online porn usage).  The Guardian looks at Google's change of heart. Here are highlights:

Google has backtracked on plans to ban sexually explicit images from its blogging platform Blogger, in the face of widespread opposition from users.

The company had initially announced a ban on “sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video”, with just a few exceptions for content which offered “a substantial public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts”.

It planned to enforce the ban from 23 March, when any user with offending material still on their blog would be forced to turn it into a private site.

Now, the company has backed down. Jessica Pelegio, a social product support manager at Google, wrote: “We’ve had a ton of feedback, in particular about the introduction of a retroactive change (some people have had accounts for 10+ years), but also about the negative impact on individuals who post sexually explicit content to express their identities.

“So rather than implement this change, we’ve decided to step up enforcement around our existing policy prohibiting commercial porn.”

“Blog owners should continue to mark any blogs containing sexually explicit content as ‘adult’ so that they can be placed behind an ‘adult content’ warning page,” she added.  Bloggers existing policy is much looser when it comes to adult content than many other providers.

Since at least 2012 the company has warned users to “not use Blogger as a way to make money on adult content” . . . .  Users are also not allowed to “post or distribute private nude or sexually explicit images or videos without the subject’s consent.”

Google Bans Porn From Blogger Based Blogs

This blog uses Google's Blogger platform.  Many other blogs that I follow do so as well.  Today, Google announced that it will ban "pornography" from blogs utilizing Blogger.  I've received no notice from Google and feel confident that this blog will continue unaffected by this new policy.  Some years ago, I did a poll of readers and by a vote of 70% to 30% readers wanted the male beauty photos to continue as a daily feature.  Sadly, some of the blogs from which I source my "male beauty" images may not fare as well given some of their racier content  The irony is that blogs with "pornography" get far higher traffic volumes than those that try to offer serious content. Here are details on Google's announcement from CNN Money:

In an announcement that was sent out to bloggers who use the company's blogging website, Google (GOOGL, Tech30) said people will no longer be able to "publicly share images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity" on Blogger as of March 23. 

Google said those Blogger sites that continue to host pornography after March 23 will be made "private." That means the content will be allowed to remain up, but it will only be accessible to the site's owner and the people who the user directly shared the blog with.

Google noted that it isn't completely banning nudity from being shown publicly on Blogger. The site will allow nudity "if the content offers a substantial public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts." 

But it also puts Google in the position of deciding what is art and what is pornography -- a decision that Instagram and other sites have struggled with.

Blogger previously allowed adult content on its sites, but it required users to mark their blogs as "adult." Those Blogger sites came with an "adult content" warning that would appear before a visitor could enter the site.

It's unclear how many sites will be affected by the new rules. Google did not respond to a request for comment.

In July, Google stopped porn from appearing in its online ads. And in 2013, Google decided to remove blogs from its Blogger network that contained advertisements for online porn sites. 

 Look for more "artistic" male beauty photos as time goes by. 

The Danger and Sadness of Sexual Shame

I've referenced before a book a friend gave to the husband and me as a wedding gift titled "The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies" that traces the prevalence and acceptance of homosexuality in societies around the globe until the arrival of Christian missionaries.  Thereafter, sexual neurosis and shame of things sexual became the norm in most instances after the missionaries had planted their poison.  While, things are changing, for far too many people, the shame and neurosis continues.  Especially among the evangelical crowd that has the highest incidence of porn use even as its members going around feigning piety and robing themselves in religiosity.  As Salon reports, a new documentary of evangelicals addicted to porn shows the damage done by the shame that is part and parcel of far right Christian sexual mores.  Here are highlights:

[T]he documentary “Heart of the Matter,” which shows, in its own words, “what it is like to be Christian and addicted to pornography and sex.” Well, here’s the top-line summary: shame. Deep, cavernous, as in Grand Canyon-size, sexual shame.

The entire film takes place on a barren white stage with interview subjects seated on stools, ready for their confessions. One man says of his porn-watching, “I’d feel some relief and then immediately thereafter a deeper level of shame, a deeper level of guilt, a deeper level of self-loathing.” Says a younger man who appears in the documentary with his mom, who caught him looking at porn: “You just start feeling like a pervert. You start feeling like an alien inside your own house.” Well, yeah, I probably would have felt like a pervert too if my parents had gone nuclear when discovering my adolescent porn-browsing history.

The documentary frequently speaks about porn in the language of addiction. Wives talk of husbands “relapsing,” one man even says of himself, “I slipped into relapse seeing a pornographic movie.” Dan Gray, co-founder of Lifestar Network, a ministry devoted to healing “compulsive sexual behavior,” says, “Much like a young person who turns to alcohol or marijuana to manage their stress or their anger or some of their loneliness, they will turn to sexual behavior in order to create the same kinds of dependency on the internal drugs.”

The documentary frequently speaks about porn in the language of addiction. Wives talk of husbands “relapsing,” one man even says of himself, “I slipped into relapse seeing a pornographic movie.” Dan Gray, co-founder of Lifestar Network, a ministry devoted to healing “compulsive sexual behavior,” says, “Much like a young person who turns to alcohol or marijuana to manage their stress or their anger or some of their loneliness, they will turn to sexual behavior in order to create the same kinds of dependency on the internal drugs.” 

My heathen’s takeaway from the film was that, yes, people can have very unhealthy relationships to both pornography and sex. But there’s one thing that’s more toxic than even that, and that’s sexual shame.

Personally, my analysis is that these folks resort to porn because they are in bad marriages and stuck with sexually frigid spouses - think Betty Bowers, America's best Christian, or The Family Foundation's Victoria Cobb.  The result?  No sexual outlets and/or remaining trapped in dead end marriages even as religious brainwashing continues to keep them conflicted in shame sex which is a normal part of humanity.

The Christofascists' Obsession with "Porn Addiction"

If one peruses any number of Christofascist cites in addition to seeing numerous promotions of "ex-gay" conversion programs one also sees many promotions for programs that will "cure" porn addiction.  Here's a sample "ministry."  Here is another.   I guess it should come as little surprise that these repressive Christofascists organizations should be obsessed with porn because (i) the Internet has made it harder to control the private activities of their sheeple, (ii) Internet porn usage is highest in the Bible Belt, and (iii) there is LOTS of money to be made - just like with "ex-gay" conversion programs (just ask Marcus, a/k/a Marcia, Bachmann) - by marketing fraudulent programs.  A piece in Salon looks at the topic and finds that there is no proof that "porn addiction" exists.  But you will never hear that from the Christofascists.  In the last analysis, with these folks it is ALWAYS about control of others and money. Also note the pathologization of being gay.  Here are some article highlights:

Porn addiction is arguably the diagnosis of our time. The idea has thrived in a time of anxiety about the proliferation of free, ever-intensifying adult material — and how it might be changing our relationships, our sex lives and our (zombie voice) braaains. . . . . But a new study suggests there is no evidence that it actually exists.

With the help of an addiction specialist and an expert in neurophysiology, clinical psychologist David Ley did a survey of the existing investigations into porn addiction. The resulting paper is published in the scientific journal Current Sexual Health Reports and concludes that research on “porn addiction” is hindered by “poor experimental designs” and “limited methodological rigor.” Ouch. The burns don’t stop there: The authors argue that the porn addiction model ignores the real issues underlying compulsive smut-watching, and that the “lucrative” treatment industry that has arisen to address this new diagnosis has no evidence of effectiveness.

The literature is weighted with moral and cultural values. There are tons and tons of theoretical statements that are made but never evaluated. The exact same thing is true for what literature there is on porn addiction.

[W]e found what I expected to find, which is that the literature is so poorly organized and uncritically produced that there is not a lot of clinical or research usefulness to the concept of porn addiction. The overwhelming majority of articles published on porn addiction include no empirical research — it’s less than 27 percent. Less than one in four actually have data. In less than one in 10 is that data analyzed or organized in a scientifically valid way.

What we find is that individuals who are reporting or being reported as having problems with excessive porn use are likely to be male, gay or bisexual, have experienced negative life events in the past, have a high libido and a relationship mismatch around sexual desires.

Lastly, and this is one of the ones that is gonna be controversial, there is a large, lucrative industry that experiences tremendous secondary gain from the promulgation of this concept. As part of this paper we had a grad student call porn addiction facilities around the country and get an idea of the cost — and the costs were extraordinary. The average was $675 a day. These facilities were recommending or requiring stays anywhere between 15 and 90 days. Insurance doesn’t pay for this; it is cash only. The other thing that is really troubling is that there is no data to show that these very expensive programs generate positive results. There is an industry — and unfortunately I count the media in that as well, because the media makes lots and lots of hay by touting the issue of porn addiction, and even by raising the controversy of “is it real or not?” There is a lot of money to be made in keeping this thing alive.

What we’re finding more and more these days is that the claims of sex addiction are based on the pathologization of gay and bi males, . . . .  these are concepts that are turning being a gay or bi male into a disease again. Even with pornography, the research is very clear: gay and bi men use pornography much more than their heterosexual counterparts — but that use of pornography is not pathological, it’s part of their coming out process, their seeking out normative or consistent depictions of sexual behavior that meets and matches their internal desires, which isn’t present in the general media. Consistently, the research shows that gay and bi men are at far greater risk of being called porn addicts than are their heterosexual counterparts, and that is troubling.

Two Alabama Cities Top List of Porn-Loving "Religious Places"

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Why Utah Leads in Online Porn Consumption

Over the weekend I looked at the phenomenon of the conservative "red states" by and large being the highest consumers of online pornography. Utah, home of the anti-gay Mormon Church, led the way with the highest online porn consumption of any state. Now the Salt Lake Tribune has a story looking at the findings and looking to explain Utah's top ranking. Personally, I suspect the underlying reason is all the Mormon hang ups on sexuality and the lure of the "forbidden fruit." Sexuality is a normal part of the human condition and when it is suppressed and treated as something dirty by institutions like the Mormon Church and the Roman Catholic Church, members will seek ways to satisfy their yearnings. Here are some story highlights:

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A study by a Harvard Business School professor shows that Utah outpaces the more conservative states -- which all tend to purchase more Internet porn than other states. Online porn subscription rates are higher in states that enacted conservative legislation banning same-sex marriage or civil unions and where surveys show support for conservative positions on religion, gender roles and sexuality, according to an analysis published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.

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"Even when I control for income, age, education, and marital status, Utah residents still consume disproportionately more than people from other states," said Edelman.

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Another possibility for Utah's top porn billing may be the scarcity of adult entertainment outside the home. "If it is distinctively difficult to get this material in retail locations in Utah, Utah residents who seek such material may have to get it online," said Edelman, in an e-mail.

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Pamela Atkinson, head of the Utah Coalition Against Pornography, said other indications, such has Utah ranking second in Google searches for "hot sex" and "naughty," back up what Edelman has found. "What I do know is that from all accounts the problem is really growing in Utah," she said. "People spending more time on the Internet are realizing this is something they can do in the privacy of their own rooms and their own homes."

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Daniel Weis, spokesman for the Colorado-based Christian group, Focus on The Family, said the study "is credible only for what it is studying, which is very little." "My caution is that people do not extrapolate that this is a report for the entire nation," he said. "The fact that conservative-minded people are fighting porn doesn't mean that they go home and look at it."

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Yeah, sure Mr. Weis - just like conservative pastors at New Life Church don't dabble in gay sex with escorts and young parish members.