A six-year study by the National Science Foundation finds that “less educated” straight men who watch porn are more readily accepting of same-sex marriage.
It’s a Sunday, I wasn’t going to blog today but, there are some stories you can’t resist commenting on.
A study by the Virginia-based National Science Foundation showing that watching porn makes men more accepting of same-sex marriage is making the rounds on quite a few news outlets.
Even The Korea Times (English and Korean versions) picked up on it, though they bungled the headline saying that “Watching gay porn helps men warm to same-sex marriage.”
That’s probably right, too –I’m no scientist.
This from Philly.com’s coverage:
A new scholarly analysis suggests that the more straight guys, especially those who are less educated, watch pornographic videos, the more they warm to same-sex marriage. The reason: Porn opens their mind up to accepting non-traditional sexual situations, like gay sex.
The study also speculated that girl-on-girl porn, was especially effective in helping crack the cro-magnon mentality, even in regards to being more accepting of male same-sex marriage.
The authors used studies of approximately 500 straight guys over the past six years that were funded by the National Science Foundation . Their findings were published in the Communication Research journal. They also speculate that the popularity of lesbian pornography helps warm the heterosexual men to the idea of same-sex marriage.
My only comment is this: I have supported same sex marriage as far back as I can remember. You can read into the correlation to porn consumption all you like. I just support it because it’s the right thing to do.
And if watching porn makes straight men more accepting of same-sex marriage, shouldn’t 99.9% be in support of the right to marry someone of the same gender?
Happy Lunar New Year and enjoy your follow up research on the study.
Additional Reading:
Porn: Marriage Equality’s Secret Weapon (Salon)
