Religious Conservatives watch more R-rated movies than liberals?

From a CT newsletter:

A recent story in Variety magazine addresses the movie-viewing habits of "religious" Americans, and it was especially interesting to read about attitudes regarding R-rated films.

The study, co-sponsored by Variety and MarketCast, was reportedly commissioned to get a better feel for the public debate about the effect of movies on our nation's moral climate. They wanted to find out whether religious conservatives, typically the most vocal group when it comes to Hollywood's "value system," were putting their money where their mouth is. More specifically, were religious conservatives griping about hyper-violent and sexual R-rated movies … but going to see them anyway?

Seems the answer to that question is yes. Not necessarily a resounding yes, but according to the story, "the religious and the nonreligious … were nearly indistinguishable in their attitudes about their own individual moviegoing experience."

Some of the specific findings:

• 25 percent of the "very religious" have seen movies rated R for their sexual content, compared to 33 percent of the "nonreligious"
  
  
• 19 percent of the "very religious" have seen movies rated R for their violent content, compared to 28 percent of the "nonreligious"

Another interesting statistic comes from within the subcategory of the "religious," regarding their viewing of violent R-rated films. Of the "religious" folk, 29 percent of those calling themselves "conservative" have seen the violent R movies, compared to only 19 percent of the "liberal" ones. So, conservatives seem to be more into violence than liberals. Hmmm.

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Matt: my denominational manual quotes Susannah Wesley for such purposes: "whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish of spiritual things, whatever increases the authority of your body over mind, that thing for you is sin."