For Utah, porn is a "public health crisis" and a "moral plague"

America has a problem with sex, as the national catharsis around Janet Jackson's vanishing vision of a nipple at the 2004 Superbowl demonstrated and is still remembered annually. In Utah they decided to act, and in 2005 they already appointed a "porn czar" in charge of monitoring good manners and modesty. The thing lasted a couple of years, but it was already a gesture in the right direction. At the end of April of this year, the Mormon state of the USA and one of the most religious in an -already- extremely religious country, has gone one step further and pornography has been declared a "public health crisis".

"Pornography perpetuates a toxic sexual environment," says the resolution recently signed by the state's Republican governor, Gary Herbert. The bill, which, however, does not have funds and does not expressly prohibit pornography, was approved unanimously by the Utah Congress in the capital Salt Lake City. It urges, for example, the collaboration of the software developers of the pornography portals themselves to apply filters that prevent access by adolescents.

Porn, 'moral plague'

"What we're saying is that we've taken steps to protect people from tobacco, but we haven't done any of that with pornography," state senator Tom Weiler, also a Republican, said at the ratification ceremony. Obviously, the decision was hailed as a "historic moment" by the Utah Coalition Against Pornography, a group affiliated with the Mormon church, which called it a "moral plague akin to a medical epidemic," in the words of Elder Jeffrey Holland, director of the group on his Facebook page.

The resolution points to "adolescent hypersexualization," its impact on "brain development" that can affect "deviant sexual arousal," and warns that it can be "biologically addictive." The critics, however, have not been long in coming, and refer to a 2009 Harvard study that gives indications of the above-average pornographic appetite in the Mormon state.

The article, titled The Red Light States: Who Buys Adult Entertainment Online and published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives by Professor Benjamin Edelman, pinpoints Utah as the top consumer of porn among the nation's 50, ahead of Hawaii. , Mississippi and Alaska. Specifically, Utah had 5.47 porn subscriptions per thousand households with broadband, followed by Hawaii with 5, Mississippi with 4.30 and Alaska with 3.70.

Utah and the Mormons

"Looking at the relative popularity of adult entertainment among consumers, one possibility is that consumers in Utah find it difficult to access their adult entertainment through retail sales. As a result, they have to turn to the internet and thus appear on the database instead of other states," Edelman told Utah's Deseret News.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the official name for the religion commonly known as the Mormon Church, and is followed by 60% of the nearly 3 million people who live in Utah. Utah was founded by the Mormons in the mid-nineteenth century, and the peculiarities of this faith have caused more than one friction with the federal government, including the so-called Utah War of 1857. For it to be finally assimilated as a state of the Union, in In 1896, the Mormons had to renounce polygamy, a key element of the religion, and which is still occasionally applied by the most conservative sectors.

Mormons' relationship with sex is peculiar, some wear special underwear and are opposed to oral sex as it contravenes "the divine function." Like everything in the US, the issue has jumped on television, with the reality show Sister Wives, on the air since 2010 and in which the daily life of a Mormon family residing in Utah first and then in Nevada is recounted, made up of the husband, Kody Brown, their four wives and their 18 children.

The program was investigated for possible federal crime for polygamy, but Brown argued that he is only legally married to one of them and that the rest of the marriages are "spiritual unions" and the case was dismissed in 2011. Both Brown and Janet Jackson live today quietly today, although neither of them do it in Utah.

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