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March 06, 2014

Do Americans REALLY Think Porn Watching Is Immoral?

JESUSLAND—The Atlantic, a publication that's provided some excellent reportage in the past, has just published an article by Emma Green titled "Most People Think Watching Porn Is Morally Wrong," which reports the findings of a survey done by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI)—and if that name itself doesn't raise your suspicions that not everything in their report is kosher and bias-free ... welcome to the club! To be fair, Googling "Public Religion Research Institute bias" (one of Google's helpful search suggestions) brings up a number of articles from religious publications/websites that charge that PRRI is biased against religious people, so there's the possibility that PRRI simply makes everyone upset—not necessarily a bad thing—but a look at PRRI's methods and numbers that gave rise to Green's article raises some troubling questions. For one thing, the issue of whether porn is "morally wrong"—a religious concept in itself—wasn't even the subject of the survey from which Green's data was taken. Rather, the report (.pdf) of the survey is titled, "A Shifting Landscape: A Decade of Change in American Attitudes about Same-sex Marriage and LGBT Issues," and it spends exactly three paragraphs on the "morality of watching porn" issue—paragraphs that also include statistics on the "morality" of same-sex sex, abortion and pot smoking. Then there's the question of the survey sample. According to the document (.pdf) "LGBT Issues & Trends Survey" on PRRI's website, while questions were asked of a total of 4,509 adults, several questions were limited to groups described only as "Form 1" and "Form 2." For example, the entire group was asked Question 8, "All in all, do you strongly favor, favor, oppose or strongly oppose (e) making it more difficult to access pornography on the Internet," 56 percent favored or strongly favored limiting access, while 39 percent opposed of strongly opposed limitations—and five percent either didn't know or refused to answer the question. By contrast, Question 11, "Next, I'm going to read you a series of statements about personal behavior. Regardless of whether or not you think it should be legal, for each one, please tell me whether you PERSONALLY believe that it is morally acceptable or morally wrong: (c) viewing pornography," was asked of just half the sample: 2,252 respondents. Of that group, just 29 percent deemed it "morally acceptable," while 65 percent labeled it "morally wrong," and one brave interviewee termed it "Not a moral issue." Also, 2 percent volunteered the response that it "Depends on the situation," while three percent volunteered "Don't know/refused." Of course, it should be pointed out up front that simply deeming porn watching to be "morally wrong" hardly means that those respondents aren't watching porn. In late 2006, the last time AVN collected statistics on porn, in what format(s) they're watching it and how much they're spending on it, it was found that U.S. adults rented or bought 921 million DVDs that year, spending $3.82 billion on that activity, based on reports from adult retailers across the country and online. Since it's pretty clear that it wasn't just one guy renting/buying all those DVDs, nor was it the entire population of the U.S. at the time—just over 298 million people, including children—it's also unlikely that the porn renting/buying population was just the (arguably) 32 percent—roughly 89 million—who didn't have a moral problem with it. That assumes, by the way, that PRRI's sampling techniques are valid. According to their report, the roughly 4,500 respondents were made up of just over 1,000 Republicans, nearly 1,400 Democrats but a whopping 1,735 "independents," which is what many disaffected Republicans have termed themselves in recent years, so adding the 461 Tea Partiers, there's probably a hefty conservative tilt to the sample. The question becomes even murkier when one adds in the religious and cultural backgrounds of the respondents. When asked what their present religion was, if any, fully 75 percent described themselves as either Protestant, Roman Catholic, Mormon, Greek or Russian (or other) Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or simply as "Christian." Moreover, of the 226 respondents who answered "Nothing in particular" to that question, when further asked, "Do you think of yourself as a Christian or not?", 60 percent said "Yes" (meaning they thought of themselves as Christian). So the sample was skewed overwhelmingly in favor of those who are religious, and of those, the overwhelming number—3,415—considered themselves as some form of Christian. But wait; it gets better! When the entire survey "cohort" was asked, "Thinking about when you were a child, in what religion were you raised, if any?", just 7 percent answered "Nothing in particular"—and not a single one responded "Atheist" or "Agnostic." So leaving out the "Nothing in particular" crowd and the 1 percent that didn't know or refused to answer, 94 percent of those who answered the survey were at least raised in a religious household. (Who was it that said, "Give me a child for the first seven years, and you may do what you like with him afterwards"?) Indeed, religion plays a big part in whether one morally objects to watching porn. The survey found that among "white evangelical Protestants," fully 88 percent said it was immoral, not to mention 63 percent of the non-evangelical kind. Hispanic Catholics have a big moral problem with it (78 percent), while just (sic) 67 percent of "white Catholics" do. Age also makes a difference regarding the "morality" of porn viewing. According to the report, "Close to half (45 percent) of Millennials [ages 18-33] say that viewing pornography is morally acceptable, five times the number of Silent Generation Americans [age 68 or older] who agree (9 percent)." And considering how quickly those Millennials are leaving established religions—and by extension, likely failing to raise their kids to be good churchgoers—the outlook is actually pretty bright for the adult industry. So while Green concludes that "the data points to one major conclusion: Most Americans simply don't approve of porn, in any sense," she admits that's different than saying most want legal action taken against it. And the fact remains that whether they morally approve of it or not, there's one hell of a lot of people watching porn out there—and considering the percentage of Millennials who don't have a problem with it, that number will undoubtedly increase. Now if only more of those folks were paying to view it, this industry would be sitting pretty!

 
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