At the recent Family Research Council Values Voter Summit, Senator Tom Coburn’s (R-OK), Chief of Staff, Michael Schwartz, was expounding at a session titled “The New Masculinity” on the connection between pornography and being gay. According to Think Progress, he had this to say “all pornography is homosexual pornography, because all pornography turns your sexual drive inwards.”
Here’s the video of his talk:
I was fascinated by this statement in light of research that was conducted by Benjamin Edelman at Harvard University analyzing the consumption of online porn around the country. According to an article in the New Scientist, this research found “those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious, than states with lower levels of consumption.” I decided to review the research itself (‘Redlight States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment“, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol 23, No 1, Winter 2008), where I found that the number 1 state in terms of the most subscriptions of online pornography per home broadband user was Utah. Following on the list of higher consuming states were Alaska, Mississippi, Hawaii and Oklahoma.
If what Schwartz says is true, then his own very conservative state of Oklahoma, would be # 5 in the country in terms of the numbers of gays. We’d also see that gays would be more prevalent in more conservative states.
Could the connection be the denial of their own innate characteristics, coupled with the religious and societal propaganda that they are fed their whole life leading to the closet and greater consumption of pornography?
Wasn’t this guy the shining example of Senator Obama’s bipartisanship? The one and only time there is record of him crossing the aisle to work with a Republican? 🙂
That said, this whole thing is just stupid.
I doubt it. As far as general porn (not counting violent, S&M or animal type stuff) I’m willing to bet that the only accurate conclusion to be drawn about people who view it are…that they like to look at naked pictures of people.