Sex Part Two

Dear Readers,

Recently one of Telemoonfa Time’s followers, S., commented that Utah leads the country in porn downloads. And S. provided a pretty authoritative link http://people.hbs.edu/bedelman/papers/redlightstates.pdf backing up that statistic. That statistic has been bothering me. Why does Utah lead the country in Internet porn downloads? There’s so many Mormons in Utah!

(According to wikipedia and lds.org today, there are 2,736,424 people in Utah, and 1,823,613 of them are LDS. That means that Utah is about 66% LDS. Who knows how many of the 1,823,613 are active/devout, though.)

One explanation for the statistic is that Utahans consume just as much porn as the people in all the other states, but Utahans might be more afraid to go to a store and buy a pornographic magazine or video, because they might run into people they know there, and they keep their porn habit a secret. In other states and religions and cultures, there might not be such a stigma around pornography, so they’re not afraid to buy porn in broad daylight.

(That reminds me of a joke. How do you keep a Mormon from drinking all your beer on a hunting trip? Bring two Mormons.)

Another explanation for that bothersome statistic is that maybe Utahans have more computers. Utah’s economy is better than a lot of the country’s, so maybe more people in Utah can afford computers, so there are more downloads of everything, so there is logically more porn downloads.

But that’s a dumb explanation.

Maybe the real reason why Utah leads the nation in porn downloads is that Mormonism is a sexually repressive religion, and that Mormonism sometimes produces people with messed-up attitudes or neurosis-psychosis-things about sex. If my last explanation is true, then that’s a shame. Church leaders, especially youth leaders, and parents should do a better job teaching children about sex.

Or maybe another viable explanation is that Satan is attacking the family, and so he works extra super hard to get Mormons involved with pornography. But that’s sort of cop-out answer, you know, “Satan made me do it.” Sometimes that’s the right answer, though.

Maybe Mormons have mental problems with sex because Mormons in America today grow up with a great divide between the Church’s attitude about sex and the media’s attitude about sex. From the Church we hear, “Thus saith the Lord, don’t do it until you’re married, and then only do it with your spouse.” From the media we hear, “Everybody should have sex with everybody all the time because sex is so cool!”

And since sex is an uncomfortable topic for a lot of families, they don’t talk about it, and kids naturally get curious, so they turn to the school locker room or the media to teach them about sex, and then they start sinning big time.

There are lots of great books and resources about human sexuality from an LDS perspective. Here’s a good article about sex straight from the Church’s official website:

http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=74e6605ff590c010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____

And here’s an entire book about teaching children about sex, published by the church: (By the way, I love the way the LDS website. It provides so much reading material and so much good information. I mean, if you had a mobile web device with you all the time, or a Kindle of something, you would never have to buy the scriptures, the church magazines, Church lesson manuals, or anything like that, because all that stuff is available online for free!)

http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=67852ce2b446c010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=53537befabc20110VgnVCM100000176f620a____

I just feel like there’s a need for Mormons or people with sheltered childhoods to talk about sex in a spiritually healthy, safe environment. That’s why I brought up this uncomfortable subject.

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa