February 2009 Archives

The New Scientist reports on a new study on porn usage, which indicates high porn consumption in red states:

"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."

In fairness, if you look at raw porn usage, the red and blue states are pretty equal. The results skew in the more, er, ironic direction when you adjust for broadband availability. The theory is that some states consume few minutes of porn just because they cant download the really vivid sex video. Mississipians in general don't subscribe to porn that much; but Mississippians with broadband connections apparently can't get enough.

Viewed that way, the porn-a-holic states are: Utah, Alaska, Mississippi, Hawaii, Oklahoma, Arkansas, North Dakota, Louisiana, West Virginia.

Does religiosity curb the lustful appetites? Actually, three of the biggest porn-watching states -- Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Arkansas -- are also among the most religious. And of course, the capital of porn usage also is home to Church of Latter Day Saints, one of the most culturally conservative denominations around.

Church attendance does seem to have some effect. Apparently, people don't watch that much porn while they're in church.

"Church-goers bought less online porn on Sundays - a 1% increase in a postal code's religious attendance was associated with a 0.1% drop in subscriptions that day. However, expenditures on other days of the week brought them in line with the rest of the country, Edelman finds."

Now, I know many of you will use these stats to point out the hypocrisy of "Christianists" (as Andrew Sullivan calls religious conservatives), just as many did when it was pointed out that red states had higher divorce rates. But it's also possible that one of the reasons these states are conservative, and religious, is they feel besieged by negative cultural forces.

They're not lustful because they're religious; they're religious because they're lustful. They're aware of the rampant sinfulness -- in part because they're busy sinning -- and figure they need church all the more.

You buying that theory?

Nick Kristoff. The New York Times columnist has an incredible perch of influence, a job most journalists would do almost anything to get. Yet every time he writes a column about Darfur or Chad or Congo he puts his power at risk. The main way to get ditched as a columnist is to be boring or lack readers' the toughest way to be interesting and well-read is to write incessantly about African poverty.

Yet he does. Again and again. And each time, he does his best to keep readers from glazing over -- this time by tricking us into thinking we'd get George Clooney gossip -- each time he succeeds, and each time you come deeply connected to a horrifying situation and newly committed to doing something about it.

I don't know Kristoff but I'm betting he has an acute sense of gratitude. Through his own hard work, he earned this incredible responsibility and he believes he therefore has a duty to use it well.

I greatly respect the spiritual goals of Lent, but I was curious about the origins of the tradition of avoiding beef.

Now, I usually am one who prefers the time-tested wisdom of the ancients to flash-in-the-pan modern experts. But I'm not sure Saint Thomas Aquinas' explanation of this fasting tradition is the best example of that sagacity. He explains that beefy animals are more like humans, which makes them more, well -- cough, cough -- arousing.

In Summa Theologica, the great Aquinas writes:

"Fasting was instituted by the Church in order to bridle the concupiscences of the flesh, which regard pleasures of touch in connection with food and sex. Wherefore the Church forbade those who fast to partake of those foods which both afford most pleasure to the palate, and besides are a very great incentive to lust. Such are the flesh of animals that take their rest on the earth, and of those that breathe the air and their products, such as milk from those that walk on the earth, and eggs from birds.

For, since such like animals are more like man in body, they afford greater pleasure as food, and greater nourishment to the human body, so that from their consumption there results a greater surplus available for seminal matter, which when abundant becomes a great incentive to lust. Hence the Church has bidden those who fast to abstain especially from these foods."

I'm very glad Aquinas didn't weigh in on why we give up Chocolate for Lent.

For years, pundits believed that the only Catholics a liberal Democrat could win en masse were theologically liberal, "Cafeteria Catholics" who don't attend mass or listen to the Pope very often.

While Obama did clean up with those lefty Catholics, a new survey by Professor John Green of University of Akron in First Things, shows that he also made stunning improvements among more traditional white Catholics.

We've seen many historic Presidential "firsts" in this administration, what with the first African American President taking leadership.

Yesterday we had another: the site of the Vice President of the United States leading a White House meeting with a smudge of ash on his forehead. The only other Catholic to hold one of the highest offices was John F. Kennedy and, as far as I've been able to tell, was never photgraphed at a public event with the marks of Ash Wednesday.

This is worth spending a moment to ponder and celebrate. Opposition to, and persecution of, Catholics was common through much of our history. Indeed, while researching my book Founding Faith, one of the things that surprised me most was the ways that some anti-Catholic sentiment fueld the Revolutionary War.

And yet here we are with the Vice President not only being Catholic (as John Kennedy was) but appearing Catholic. Another milestone for religious freedom and pluralism.

One thing I suspected but could never prove about the politics of all this was that Biden would help pull more Catholics than John Kerry, a Catholic, did. Though theologically they're both similarly in the doghouse with the Church (over abortion), Biden was a full-blown cultural Catholic, and Kerry wasn't.

A new study of the religious patterns of the election doesn't touch on a possible Biden role (which I suspect was minimal in the way vice presidential picks always are), but it does show something stunning: the ticket improved dramatically among traditional Catholics -- the ones who go to mass most, pray most, believe in most Catholic doctrine. Obama-Biden improved on Kerry's performance by a staggering 17 points according to a new survey by Prof. John Green of University of Akron.