Recently, I stumbled upon this little gem of a study (warning–link goes to pdf) over at a blog (which I do not regularly read, but one of my friends does) called Gene Expression (first link goes to summary, second link goes to actual study).  Two facts immediately jumped out at me from looking at the map of the United States all coded–first off, Utah, with it’s incredibly dense population of LDS members is one of the highest consumers of online pornography and second, Idaho, with a nearly equally high density population of LDS is among the lowest.  What gives?  Unlike the Gene Expression folks, the conclusion of religiosity fails to satisfy me as an immediate explanation.

This data was collected by asking a single provider of multiple sources of online pornography to provide the zipcodes of all subscribers in their database.  This is actually a very solid method, although (as I’ll discuss a bit more later on) having a second provider for this same information would go along way to make this an ever more useful study.  From a methodological viewpoint, however, there is little to argue with.

The author of the study is careful to normalize the data to account for income after looking at the raw data–which is a good idea.  After this adjustment, the following table (looking at the far right column) shows that Utah has the highest subscription rate and Idaho has the lowest: 1.89 versus -1.11.

Note that in the table below the data in the far right column has been adjusted for market demographics such as household income, household size and similar factors.  Note that it doesn’t matter HOW you slice it, Utah is STILL the highest subscriber and Idaho is STILL one of the absolute lowest.  There is something seriously odd about that.

From the original article, the author makes this following statement:

“Subscriptions are slightly more prevalent in states that have enacted conservative
legislation on sexuality (regression results on file with the author). In the 27
states where “defense of marriage” amendments have been adopted (making
same-sex marriage, and/or civil unions unconstitutional), subscriptions to this
adult entertainment service are weakly more prevalent than in other states (p 
0.096). In such states, there were 0.2 more subscribers to this adult web site per
thousand broadband households, 11 percent more than in other states. (Edelman, 2009, p. 11)”

But in looking at Wikipedia we see that Utah is 58% LDS (I know, the bane of scholarship–I was doing so well and then I go to wikipedia for my census data!) and Idaho is about 22.8% LDS.  It’s a big difference.  It also makes me think that all the talks I’ve been hearing in General Conference about pornography are pretty much on target, but depressingly ineffective.  From the study:

The fourth column reports that in regions where more people report regularly
attending religious services (per National Election Studies 2004), overall subscription
rates are not statistically significantly different from subscriptions elsewhere
(p = 0.848). However, in such regions, a statistically significantly smaller proportion
of subscriptions begin on Sundays, compared with other regions. In particular,
a 1 percent increase in the proportion of people who report regularly attending
religious services is associated with a 0.10 percent reduction in the proportion of
purchases that occur on Sunday. This analysis suggests that, on the whole, those
who attend religious services shift their consumption of adult entertainment to
other days of the week, despite on average consuming the same amount of adult entertainment as others. (As an interesting comparison, Malhotra, 2008, finds that
religious people are more charitable only on Sundays.) (Edelman, 2009, p. 10)

This suggests that whatever lessons we are hearing on pornography are not effective in achieving their goals (at least, not in Utah).  Now there are some alternate conclusions that I would like to put forward, lest I be thought to be unnecessarily harsh.

First it is entirely possible that in states with very conservative laws about access to pornography that those who are not religious are using the internet to access material that they have trouble getting otherwise.  This is a pleasing idea, but fails to explain the Sunday-only drop in online sales. A second idea is needed to explain that: perhaps these people are spending more time with their family or are otherwise engaged on Sundays, and are therefore less inclined to make the sales at that time.  It may be that the family is home more, and therefore they have less opportunity for viewing on that day.  Numerous plausible explanations exist to deal with the Sunday-only drop.  Occam’s Razor doesn’t really apply here since we are not really adding more assumptions in either case.

Second, there is a major flaw in the study–it should be noted that this is an analysis of data from only one particular online provider of pornography (and the author of the study is aware of this limitation and notes it as such).  This isn’t a show-stopper, but it is something to consider.  It could well be that a different purveyor of pornography possibly provides pertinent information of a different sort.  Alliteration aside.

So here’s the question: the data are available on the matter, do you agree that this is a problem that is tied to religion or is it better explained by something else?  If it is a problem unique to religion what else can the church do to help achieve the goals of reducing interest in this?  I know that not everyone is going to agree with that goal, but I will say that regardless of your views on the subject, it is fairly easy to agree on the idea that the CHURCH has the goal of reducing viewership of pornography by it’s adherents.  What more can the church do that will actually be effective?  Because there does seem to be a problem.

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Obviously, there were actual Mormon colonies early in the pioneering days, which is how most of the West was settled. However, that is not the topic I want to explore. I have only had a few experiences with what I will call modern-day colonial Mormons.

1. When I was a teenager (1985), I met my first “colonial” Mormon in my home ward. A family moved into the ward from Utah. All the membership prior to that were from the local area. Immediately, the mother of the family started (subtly) pointing out things that were “wrong” about how our ward did things. We should have early morning seminary, not weekly (despite having six different high schools and a 25 mile commuting radius). The Young Women should do crafts and present group musical numbers. The bishop should do something about the crazy Pentacostal convert who kept shouting “hallelujah” and rapping her fan on the pew when a particularly good point was made in church.  And we suddenly had to have a Pioneer Day parade, even though it wasn’t a recognized holiday and hardly anyone had pioneer ancestry.  Little things like that.
2. My second experience was at the end of my mission (1990).  An older couple was assigned to one of the wards as ”leadership” missionaries.  The wife immediately began focusing on getting the local sisters interested in ”homemaking” projects (mostly crafts).  She expressed to me her disbelief that none of the sisters knew how to crochet or knit!  (Perhaps because it was a warm-climate island).  Previously, they had spent their homemaking meetings discussing how to have stronger marriages and how to help sisters in need.  I question whether this was an upgrade.

So, what happens in the cycle of colonialism?

• A colonizing group decides to expand to new territories, exporting their culture and traditions and imposing them on those colonized areas.   This is also characterized by:
  • A desire to preserve the cultural elements of the colonizing group and to impose those traditions, values, and practices on other cultures.
  • A condescending attitude toward local populace and customs.
  • A paternalistic approach to educate others on “the right way.”
• An initial fascination by the local group for the colonizing culture (e.g. Anglophiles); an (initial) agreement that the colonizing culture is in some way preferred or “better.”  (Some converts, especially in the early days, awaited for instruction from HQ as it were).
• Eventually, one of two things happens:
  • An eventual break at the local level with the colonizing group.  This could be a violent, intentional break (e.g. the American Revolution), a passive yet intentional break (e.g. Indian rights reform) or a more evolutionary break as a new culture emerges in the local area which supersedes the colonizing culture (e.g. Roman Catholic Church vs. Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church).
  • Guilt among the colonizing group about treatment of the local populace accompanied by awkward and problematic repatriation (e.g. French believe first and foremost in equality, yet do not like admitting the Muslim culture into their tightly-controlled society).  This can happen when the local populace’s issues cannot be satisfactorily resolved to create an equal status through independence.

But perhaps a third option, in the case of the church, is to become a truly world-wide church (the stone that fills the earth) in which diversity of culture is embraced while retaining centralized doctrine.  Is that really an achievable aim or is colonization a human tendency that is so ingrained it’s inevitable?  A lot has been written about the introduction of harmful plants and animals that changed the eco-systems of North America, such as the honeybee.  Are colonizing Mormons aware enough of the potentially harmful elements they may be introducing (e.g. funeral potatoes, green jello, prolific zucchini plants) into the native cultures to avoid it?  IMO, colonialism is harmful to both the local group and to the colonizing group if it 1) implies superiority of one culture over the other, 2) shifts the focus to cultural elements away from doctrinal, or 3) creates cultural rifts and inequities between different groups of the church.

As Elder Uchdorff mentioned in conference, we should embrace the “faith of our fathers” and most importantly of our “Heavenly Father.”  Jello optional.  Crafts not required.  Bring your own flan to the Pioneer Day parade that’s being held in someone’s backyard because none of the local members hail from pioneer stock; instead, they are all pioneers with their own tales of conversion and courage–they are among the first members of the church within their own family trees.

So, have any of you encountered cultural colonialism? Or has this largely been done away with over time (as you see, my examples are not recent)?  What is cultural colonialism?  Is it cultural colonialism that conference is in English, always held in Utah, even though there are more LDS outside the US now?