Anti-Gay Hotspots Also Top Consumers of Gay Porn

Nothing could be finer than to watch porn in Carolina in the morning. And the afternoon. And the evening.

Especially if it is gay porn.

According to a recent PornHub survey, North Carolina and Mississippi are among the top five gay porn-consuming states in the country. These are also the two states whose legislatures have recently enacted the most sweeping anti-gay laws in the U.S.

Oh, yes. And Tar Heels and Mississippians don't just like gay porn: Their top preference is for porn showing well-endowed black men. This is ironic considering the tradition of racial prejudice against African-Americans in both states.

The more Republican and religious the state is, the more their residents love porn. So except for District of Columbia and New York, all of the Southern red states are the leaders in watching gay porn. And lots of it.

So gay porn sites around the country are thankful for Gov. Pat McCrory and the Republican state legislators who continue to promote HB2 and keep cities and towns from enacting anti-discrimination ordinances to protect LGBT people. The more they hate on gays, the more North Carolinians want to watch man-on-man porn.

It was confirmed during the Republican National Convention. The numbers of people watching gay porn in the Cleveland area dramatically increased, as well as those posting ads on Craigslist and social media apps like Grindr. And hustlers did a booming business at the convention.

But it isn't just closeted conservative Republican single and married guys who are jacking off in private watching porn clips. More than 37 percent of gay male porn viewers nationwide are (drumroll, please)....women. And Pornhub reports that women aged 18-25 are 83 percent more likely to watch gay porn than their male counterparts, though as they get older it's more likely the men are watching the hot action in the privacy of their homes.

It needs to be noted that straight porn consumption in the Tar Heel State is also way above the natural average. So what is going on here?

First is the fact that abstinence education was the only sexual education permitted in North Carolina for 15 years and is still the focus for school districts. The Religious Right still promotes this, which in turn causes people to hunt for sexual information. A study by Cara MacInnis and Gordon Hodson in Archives of Sexual Behavior showed that the red states like North Carolina had higher percentages of Google searches for "sex."

Secondly, the more the religious right and the Republicans promote a culture of secrecy and fear around human sexuality, the more people are likely to try to find out more and check out porn sites. The Republican Convention platform this year opposed all gay rights, opposed pornography in all its forms and backed abstinence education, even as some of their delegates were watching gay porn in their hotel rooms and hooking up with men.

Perhaps McCrory and other conservative leaders in North Carolina should pay attention to the 2009 Harvard study which found that people who agreed with statements like "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," and "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behavior," were the ones who most looked up sex-related topics on Google. And watched more porn.

So the more shame and opposition, the more North Carolinians love their forbidden fruit: gay porn.