Despite our reputations as political conservatives who extoll family values, a 2009 study out of Harvard University assigned Utahns the unflattering status of being number one in the nation for online pornography consumption. But a more recent analysis by PornHub.com, one of the world’s largest purveyors of pornographic material, says the online viewing of porn has dropped 68 percent in Utah, now placing us at 40th in the nation.
Too conservative?
When porn consumption in Utah was at its peak, Pamela Atkinson, former chair of the Utah Coalition Against Pornography, believed that Utah’s repressive religious culture pushed people to view prurient material, especially on the internet. “It’s because we don’t have the adult movie stores as much as they do in other states,” she explains. “And people have come to realize that you can access this material quite easily.”
Others dispute the religion factor, citing instead Utah’s higher-than-average porn-viewing population of 15-to-34-year-olds, and the fact that 80 to 90 percent of online pornography, unlike magazines and videos, is free and can be accessed anonymously.
More than a “bad habit”
Ironically, the same Latter-day Saint culture that some say nudges its members to indulge in porn to satisfy a stifled curiosity about sex, especially among its youth, strongly opposes the viewing of porn and considers it a sin because it replaces healthy sexuality with distorted perceptions of genuine love and affection that should only occur within the bounds of marriage.
Religion aside, most people believe pornography to be much more than just a bad habit or compulsion, bordering instead on a dangerous addiction that promotes violence against women and even children. One former porn addict admits that “Porn is a social toxin that destroys relationships, steals innocence and erodes compassion.”
And yet the industry thrives. With more than 420 million sites on the internet, porn is a world-wide, multi-billion-dollar enterprise that strives to satiate a global lust for erotic material. In America alone, porn’s profits eclipse the total annual revenues of the NFL, NBA, and MLB combined.
What is pornography?
What pornography is comes down to personal interpretations that are subjective, arbitrary, and lack definition. Even Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, in 1964, when asked to define pornography, said this: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.”
Since that time, the US Supreme Court has enacted laws that deny First Amendment protections to obscene or sexually explicit material, most notably that involving children.
Utah’s “Porn Czar”
Utah’s preoccupation with internet porn got so bad that in 2000, then Governor Mike Leavitt appointed Paula Houston as the state’s first “Porn Czar” to investigate and regulate Utah’s rising porn addiction and aggressively pursue anyone who violated Utah’s obscenity laws.
In 2003, the state retreated from the embarrassment of having a porn czar, with Republican state Sen. Todd Weiler of Woods Cross saying the “whole thing was a public-relations nightmare and kind of made Utah the laughingstock of the nation.”
“Massage” parlors
Proponents of therapeutic massage, from athletes to the very sedentary, will attest to the important health benefits of regular, clinical massage performed by a licensed therapist.
However, once clandestine and hard to find, illegitimate practitioners of massage now operate openly in Utah, masked as legitimate establishments. But much of what goes on behind the doors of these “massage parlors” or “spas” may violate Utah’s statutes regarding nudity, obscenity and prostitution, and sometimes involve human trafficking. Many have been raided and shut down in recent years, with owners and patrons alike being arrested, but some of them simply reopen again under different names and locations.
In September 2021, evidence uncovered by the state’s SECURE (Statewide Enforcement of Crimes by Undocumented REsidents) Strike Force revealed that “female workers were brought to Utah to work legitimate jobs but were then forced into sex work,” according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
An unknown number of Asian women from six Wasatch Front massage parlors were given medical attention, food and shelter, and other assistance.
Three people were arrested by the Utah Attorney General’s Office after a five-month investigation in which more than $100,000 in cash and assets were seized. Charges included “exploitation of a prostitute, aiding prostitution, money laundering, a pattern of unlawful activity and maintaining a public nuisance.”
Human beings have always enjoyed their carnal vices. And Utahns, it seems, no matter how hard we try to be different, are no exception.
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