Tuesday, June 19, 2007

I've thought about this one all day

Evangelicals have a problem with porn. Who knew?

A new survey shows that five of ten Christian men in the U.S. -- and two of ten Christian women -- are addicted to pornography.

It is all starting to make sense.

Bill Cooper, president of Christian.com, says there is an escalation in Internet pornography addiction among evangelicals. The survey found that 50 percent of men who regularly attend church are addicted to pornography, and 20 percent of female churchgoers are also addicted. The Internet has made it easier for people to get trapped in pornography's grip, Cooper explains.

Evangelicals watch just a much porn as everyone else, get divorced just as often,  beat their spouses, sell drugs... the list is long. The real difference between an evangelical and a normal everyday American is that evangelicals want to mandate how we live without living up to the standards themselves.

Also, I love reading the comments...

Also, I guess it depends on what the poll definition of Christian is. Christians like Hillary? Christians like Rick Warren?

Did you forget "Christian like James Dobson"?

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4 comments:

tina FCD said...

"The real difference between an evangelical and a normal everyday American is that evangelicals want to mandate how we live without living up to the standards themselves."

If "god" is all knowing, don't they realize that "he" is watching everything they do? I don't get it.

Unknown said...

I am in no way a Christian (nor religious of any other variety), and I love the rush of schadenfreude that comes out of articles like this, but I kind of agree with the comments questioning the statistical validity of the survey. The article itself seems to use the terms "Christian" and "evangelical" interchangeably. Those categories may overlap, but they're very different things -- my husband is a pro-choice, liberal Catholic. He's far from evangelical, but he is a Christian. I'd like to know what questions were asked in the survey to determine the religion. Also, the article says the survey was performed by ChristiaNet, which I would assume is a website catering to hardcore Christians. I wonder whether it was actually a scientific survey or just a survey on their website. If it was just a survey of their own readership, the likelihood that Christian = evangelical would go up, but the likelihood that the survey sample was representative would go down. I would guess that people who are already spending enough time on the internet to fill out surveys are more likely to be browsing porn sites than those use the internet sparingly.

Anyway, I'd love to know more about the questions asked and the polling methods used.

Mojoey said...

My guess is that it was a "hey do you go to church and if so have you seen porn of the internet" kind of survey. 50% seems way too high.

Unknown said...

I actually went to their site (what a mess, by the way -- hard to find what you're looking for, and half of it is just ads for various products). I couldn't find anything about this survey, but I found a link to take another "survey." It comprised two questions -- "How often do you watch R-rated movies?" and "Are you a Christian?" So... eh. Probably most people on that site are indeed of the evangelical variety. I still think the numbers are skewed... and how do they know that these people are addicted to porn as opposed to simply liking to look at it (as so many do)? Is there even such a thing as an addiction to pornography? Or is that just the excuse that fundamentalists use so they don't have to admit that they're just as dirty and sex-crazed as the rest of us?