From Time, proof that smut and Christian fundamentalism get along just fine:
Excitement over the highly-anticipated film Fifty Shades of Grey is heating up in places few could have guessed. According to online box office Fandango, ticket pre-sales in Mississippi, where until recently it was actually illegal to sell sex toys, are four-times higher than the site expected.
And the Magnolia State isn’t the only Southern locale where pre-sale tickets are selling rapidly. In Arkansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Alabama — where the sale of sex toys is still banned — pre-sales are double what sellers expected.
[S]aid Fandango Chief Correspondent Dave Karger in a press release, “It’s also a surprisingly hot seller in the South and Heartland, indicating that the anticipation for this film is across the board.”
Many of the states where pre-sales have exceeded expectations are among the most religious and Republican in the U.S..
It’s not a fluke. The greatest hunger for bawdy entertainment exists where conservatism and religion go hand in hand.
Last year, Canadian psychologists Cara MacInnis and Gordon Hodson examined Google porn-search data and discovered that, controlled for factors like population, income, and other variables, states where religiosity and conservative ideas are more prevalent also stand out in volume of porn searches. They wrote:
[A]lthough characterized by an outward and vocal opposition to sexual freedom, regions characterized by stronger political right orientations were relatively associated with a greater underlying attraction to sexual content.
This also tracks with the extraordinary number of hyper-raunchy Internet searches emanating from pious Muslim nations like Pakistan and Egypt. Even bestialility is a huge draw: according to the Google numbers, Pakistan is number one in the world for “dog sex,” “goat sex,” and “pig sex.”
Maybe Fifty Shades of Oink would be a success there?