Another Campaign, Another Pledge

The Republicans are real big on pledges, it seems. This one actually happened last October, but now it's suddenly in the news, and it's a real hoot:

Last October, Morality In Media (MIM), the “leading national organization opposing pornography and indecency through public education and the application of the law,” launched an effort to get presidential candidates in both major parties to commit to strict enforcement of obscenity laws. In both face-to-face meetings and written statements, three candidates made this pledge: Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum.

Why am I not surprised? Romney, of course, will sign anything, as will Gingrich, and Santorum lives to interfere in other people's private lives. They all made statements, but Newt's is my favorite:

When MIM’s Executive Director Dawn Hawkins asked former Speaker Gingrich if he will enforce existing laws that make distribution of hard-core adult pornography illegal, he responded: “Yes, I will appoint an Attorney General who will enforce these laws.”

If he's not too busy arresting activist judges.

I have a novel suggestion -- let's try treating adults as adults. Just to see what happens.

And a word to the candidates: If you're trying to appeal to your base, you may have just blown it:

Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds. . . .

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.

Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don't explicitly restrict gay marriage.

To get a better handle on other associations between social attitudes and pornography consumption, Edelman melded his data with a previous study on public attitudes toward religion.

States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behaviour."

I don't think I need to add anything to that.