Online porn a hit in Utah

One concept I've heard from religious believers is that the more believers that reside within a certain geographical area, the more moral that area will become.  I recall sermon anecdotes of small towns had nine taverns and one church, and at the end of a decade the numbers were reversed.  The idea is that religion has an inoculating effect such that even non-believers behave more morally due to the positive influence of their believing friends, neighbors, and co-workers.

Huffington Post has a fascinating infographic pulled from Online MBA regarding online pornography, some which have interesting ramifications for that idea:

• Sunday is the most popular day for viewing porn online.

It's curious that, on the day the majority of religious worshipers are attending services, they are also browsing for and downloading online pornography.  While the infographic doesn't identify the religious affiliation of the Sunday porn viewers, there's no reason why non-believers would opt for Sundays for their porn viewing over other days.  If the vast majority of Americans are religious believers, as religious conservatives are so quick to remind us, and if the majority of those believers are attending services on Sunday, then clearly a lot of them are rushing home from church to check out some hot sites.

Here's another:

• Utah has the nation's highest online porn subscription rate per thousand home broadband users: 5.47

So Utah, largely populated with Bible-believing Mormons--who frown on pornography as a rule--are the country's highest subscribers of online porn.

This is more than just pointing out possible hypocrisy in those who decry pornography while privately consuming it.  This is one more piece of evidence against the myth of the inoculating effect of religion.  Religion and morality have little to do with each other, and an increase in one does not necessarily accompany an increase in the other.