There's a shocking news story that's been circulating across online media outlets and newspapers this week. Well... at least WE were shocked. Here's one version of the story, from Tuesday's PC World online edition:
• Utah: Online Porn Capital of America?The Salt lake Tribune has the full story too, under this similarly lurid headline:
• Utah is No. 1 - for online pornography consumptionFrankly, we're still experiencing more than a slight amount of cognitive dissonance over this. After all, aren't we the only state in America with its own legislatively funded "porn Czar?" And what about that "Utah Family Values" thing?
This proposed discussion topic arrives on the Weber County front page this morning, courtesy of this morning's Standard-Examiner editorial, wherein the Std-Ex editorial board brings it all out in the open and tries to sort it all out:
• OUR VIEW: What's on your computer?Although we're grateful for the efforts of our home town newspaper to put it all in context, we're still operating on the assumption that those pointy-headed Harvard professors who published this study surely must have gotten their hands on some "bad data." Right?
So what say our gentle readers about this?
Hopefully there's an armchair psychologist or statistician amongst our readership who'll be able to make some sense of this. (Extra points will be awarded for any reader analysis which brings up the adjective "repressed.")
Utah: Online Porn Capital of America?
Tell us it ain't so, O Gentle Ones.
Perfect topic to kick off a weekend open topic thread, we think.
16 comments:
This looks like a job for Buttars, Waddoups and Valentine.
...and Ruzicka!
Didnt Marlon Brando use a stick of Buttars in the Last Tango in Paris?
Sex = Good.
Murder = Bad.
Utah = Murder < Sex.
Utah = Good.
The SLC TRIB publised an article on Utah..... the Porn Capital, on 3.3.09:
Utah is No. 1 - for online pornography consumption
http://www.sltrib.com/Business/ci_11821265
The comment section of this SLC TRIB article IS now up to 373. People are still posting. One of the first comments makes most of the points I would make, not being born in Utah:
buttars: 3/2/2009 7:27:00 PM +46
"It surely seems that it's always the "finger-pointers" who are doing exactly "what" they tell everyone else NOT to do - be it Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard (gay preacher in Colorado) or the local Catholic priest.
I once read (in this paper) that 50% of the inmates at the Point of the Mountain are there because of a sex crime. I'd like to know if that is the same in other states - or just Utah.
I moved here from a state the was always considered "liberal"; however, I never realized how naive I was until I moved to Utah; namely, the high divorce rate, all the "kids having kids" (out of wedlock), 35 year old people married 6 or 7 times (just so they could have sex), unmarried Mormons having sex with their clothes on, grown men "sneaking" a bottle of booze at the liquor store, etc."
And of course, what every young teen is taught by her sisters: when in a pinch and saving it for marriage:
Oral is Moral.
"Utah is a red state when it comes to porn" comments
Another SLC TRIB letter:
Straights for gays / 3.6.09
Comments here up to 151. The regular TRIBposters are just getting warmed up. No surprise. Since the SLC TRIB articles attract posters from around the USA.
>From the article:
"........... Enough is enough. So, to the Sutherland Institute, Sen. Buttars and members of the Legislature responsible for killing these bills: You have opened my eyes to the depth of your dark side. You have inspired me to change my status from someone who passively sympathized to one who will actively fight in the future to find "common ground."
I encourage other "straight" citizens of Utah to join me."
Beverly Vargo
Salt Lake City
Being from the liberal America / NE.........my eyes have been opened, since moving to Utah 3 yrs ago, to civil rights abuses in Utah in all quarters: blacks, women, people of color, as well as gay, transgender, transvestite men and women.
Once again, the comments section of this article are as/ more interesting than the letter:
http://www.tribtowns.com/comments/read_comments.asp?ref=11857813&sec=Opinion
So where are the liberals in Ogden?
It seems to me that our Legislature needs to learn and re-learn an important tenet.
The common thread uniting all these recent reports is that if there is something that is not particularly harmful and you make it illegal, then you make it more attractive.
A Libertarian/PaleoConservative view would be that everything that cannot be demonstrated to represent a direct and palpable harm to another individual or to society is None of Your Damn Business.
It is possible to be a Libertarian Lefty (which, after all, is the British meaning of the word "liberal") just as it's possible to be an Authoritarian Lefty. See The Political Compass for an explanation.
Libertarian Lefties like me find Authoritarian Righties to be particularly distasteful. We agree on practically nothing.
If the Utah Legislature wanted to reduce rates of drug use, adultery, pornography, etc. then one would make them legal but discouraged by the moral leaders of the community, viz. cigarette smoking, coffee consumption in Utah.
We would find that peer pressure is a much more useful and palpable force than legislation, which after all is a pretty blunt tool.
I am not gay. I have never been gay.
I am not gay either. I have never been gay either.
Howell and Schwebke can you meet me at the airport?
Gotta admire odd one in 72-1
By Lee Benson
Deseret News
Published: March 4, 2009
I don't know Neil Hansen, but I've got a feeling we'd get along.
Hansen is a legislator from Ogden, and yesterday when members of the Utah House of Representatives voted 72-1 in favor of giving themselves a 10 percent pay cut, he was the 1.
At last, an honest politician.
Of 73 people voting, Hansen is the only one who, when asked, "Are you in favor of reducing your salary?" answered, "No."
Obviously, the legislators who voted to voluntarily reduce their paychecks figure it will play well in the public arena, improve their popularity and help them get re-elected, particularly when the Dow Jones is falling so fast they now just call it the Dow.
And I'm sure they're right. The public loves a long-suffering politician. Look at the mileage the newly elected Jason Chaffetz is getting out of sleeping on a cot in his office during his first term in Washington. Even though it isn't saving the taxpayers a dime and it makes no sense. For one thing, we the taxpayers are now paying for his lodging. And for another thing, the way to turn around the economy is for people to start spending more, not less.
But in politics, perception regularly trumps reality.
Still, I admire politicians who aren't slaves to image and illusion; who don't bow to peer pressure; who do things because they are substantive instead of what people want to see and hear.
We're already among the biggest cheapskates in the country when it comes to legislative pay. As I wrote in a column a month ago, the basic Utah legislator's average annual salary of $14,750 ranks among the five lowest in America — less than half the national average of $35,404.
And at that, the pay decrease is largely symbolic, not to mention misleading. The headlines say the legislators are taking a 10 percent pay cut, but the 10 percent only applies to their daily pay rate of $130 during the official 45-day session. All other compensation, including lodging and mileage, will stay the same.
A reduction from $130 a day to $116 a day over 45 days equals $585 less per legislator. Multiply that amount by 104 legislators and the grand total saved is $60,840.
In California, where the average lawmaker makes $116,098 a year, they call that ashtray change.
But here in Utah, where lawmakers could make more working at Taco Bell, it adds up to just one more reason why politicians are vulnerable to lobbyists with lures of free dinners and courtside Jazz tickets.
We should pay the elected officials a legitimate wage and cut out all the freebies.
And yet you just know Neil Hansen, the one man who went against the grain, is going to catch a load of grief for voting his conscience.
But not from me. He's suddenly my favorite guy on the hill.
I looked up his biography on the Internet. It says he's a Democrat, 49 years old, married, has eight kids, is serving his sixth term in the Legislature, graduated from Ogden High School, attended Weber State but did not get a degree and when he's not making laws works as a heavy equipment operator for the Ogden City water department.
He is a past president of the Ogden City Employees Association, a past secretary of the Northern Utah Labor Council, a board member of the Utah State AFL-CIO and a past board member for two credit unions.
His official Utah House of Representatives photo shows him wearing, appropriately enough, a shirt with a blue collar.
Exactly the kind of man who appreciates the value of a dollar — and the all-American notion that it's just plain crazy once you get your salary up to a certain level to voluntarily pay yourself anything less.
Lee Benson's column runs Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com
© 2009 Deseret News Publishing Company | All rights reserved
Rep. Parker who was a republican in the early 2000 that was caught with a male prostitute in slc. where was butters then. O he was in the other car.
Folks brought up in America who have lived in Europe are at first shocked when they see billboards with exposures which would send native Utahns screaming to their Bishops. Re the ruckus raised over mere silouettes on a business window in Clearfield or Sunset?
A walk along the beaches of the Mediterranean or a stay at decent western hotels like the Sheridan, reveal totally nude females and men in coed saunas, etc. As do some individuals in picnic areas on a sunny afternoon all across Europe.
After a relative short time you begin to see that no one cares or even notices. And you become embarrassed that you notice such things. It all becomes "normal" human behavior, not immoral or pornographic behavior.
I know! I know. It is hard to believe unless you have experienced it. But the point is Monotreme is exactly "spot on" with his comments posted above. At least in my own experience and opinion.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction... For every ill advised and impose LDS (or any other) morals or paternalistic law passed there are those who will always get a big charge out of doing it "just because it is illegal". And yes Rudi, the LDS culture IS considered both oppressive and repressive (resulting in "repressed" and pent up behaviors or acting out) by virtually everyone who has either grown up here or lived here for a significant number of years.
This explains why so many believe in nothing or the "Flying Spagetti Monster" grins...
Please do not overreach or interpret what I am saying. No murder, etc. should not be legalized.
Svengali
Your posts are usually pretty clever, interesting and on da money. You have freshened up the air here on the WCF.
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