Say what you mean, and do what you say!

Interesting news, of late:
It seems that the highest consumers of on-line pornography reside in “conservative” states. The state with the highest rate of pornography viewing – Utah! You have to be careful not to extend the interpretation of the data too far, but it is interesting nevertheless!
From the article.

However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.
Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year’s presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama.
Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don’t explicitly restrict gay marriage.

I remember when I was working with Chi Alpha, the campus ministry organization of the Assemblies of God. During the 1980’s, a friend of mine was the campus pastor at Missouri State University in Springfield, the headquarters city for the Assemblies of God (Mecca, as we jokingly called Springfield back then). The Assemblies have two college in Springfield – the liberal-arts Evangel University and Central Bible College. A doctor approached my campus pastor friend about a problem the doctor’s clinic was experiencing. The doctor asked my friend what in the world was going on at the two Assemblies colleges because of the incredible number of girls from the schools that were showing up for abortions! You got it, not so much from the 21,000 students of Missouri State, but the born-again, spirit-filled students from the two little Assemblies of God colleges.
My friend told me that the two colleges knew of the problem, but never broached the subject or tried to deal with it. Why? Because to admit such a thing by dealing with it would bring shame upon the schools and lower enrollment. After all, what God-fearing parent would want to send their child to a “safe Christian college” when there was an outbreak of fornication and abortion. This is the corner American-Evangelicalism (or Mormonism) has painted itself into. A lot of what passes for religious faith-informing-behavior in the U.S. comes out to be nothing much more than hypocritical blathering. I have no doubt that the adherents truly want to live as they proclaim they do or how that demand we all should, but the “system” that they’ve developed and hide behind just doesn’t bear out – it just doesn’t work, no matter how loudly or stubbornly it is proclaimed to work. Just like reparative-therapy just doesn’t make homosexuals into heterosexuals.
A lot of what religion claims to be just doesn’t match up with reality. (And, I believe that we are called to live holy lives and that God does enable such lives to be lived!)