Santorum, anti-porn warrior

Robbery and homicide were at a little over two per 100,000 and around five per 100,000 respectively in the early 1960s. They rose to around nine in the mid-1970s and largely staying between 10 and eight until spiking in the early 1990s, going up to 11 for robbery and almost 10 for murder. Both stats have declined since then to under six. Now, if Rick Santorum were correct and pornography was a cause for rape and sexual assaults, then considering that porn has grown dramatically from its jump from still photos in magazines with the film “Deep Throat” in 1974 and grew rapidly during the late 1980s with first the introduction of the VCR, then even more so with the introduction of the DVD in the mid-1990s and then even more so with online porn in the late 1990s, we should have then seen a pretty steady and by now, a dramatic rise in rape and sexual assaults, right? Well, covering only the years 2000 through 2009, the Department of Justice concluded (Page 2 of the PDF) that rape and sexual assault declined at pretty much the same rate that all other crimes declined during that same period. As pornography became increasingly easy to get and to view privately during this period, I'd say Santorum's thesis, that America is “suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography” is a complete fail.

Update: To gauge how much the adult film industry grew, I looked at adult videos released according to Adult Video News on October 2000 and October 2007. The numbers were 150 and 345 respectively. Since the industry crashed along with everyone else since the end of 2007, it's a pretty good presumption using Santorum's thesis, that the crash would have made some visible difference to the amount of rape and sexual assault. According to Santorum, however, sexual crimes grew since President Obama took office, so again, Santorum achieves a complete fail.