Don’t be surprised if you see an uptick in pregnant teens in the next couple of years, because now that Mike Pence and his brigade of sexually repressed evangelical killjoys are in the white house, abstinence-only sex education is coming back big time. The last time this “see no genitals, hear no genitals” policy was in place back during the George H.W. Bush administration, teen pregnancy and STI rates went up, but that information came from government scientists at the Centers for Disease Control. And we all know how dinosaur-riding Jesus feels about them.
Anyway, Utah, America’s most Mormon state, is way ahead of the national curve in restoring the thrillingly unhealthy mystery of not knowing how your no-no zone works. This past Monday, lawmakers in the state rejected a bill that would allow parents the option to give their children comprehensive sex education—or not. The bill left the choice up to parents, but apparently even that was too much for the God-and-genital fearing people of Utah, and “abstinence first” sex education still reigns in the state.
Now xHamster, the porn “tube” site that made a point of calling North Carolinians out on their hypocrisy over last year’s transphobic “bathroom law,” is doing the same for Utah. Effective this week, all traffic to the site coming from Utah will be re-directed to a series of PG-13, xHamster-produced sex-education videos called The Box. “Beginning immediately, we’re rerouting all xHamster traffic from Utah to our comprehensive sex ed series, The Box,” the company says. “We’ve been working on The Box since last year, producing videos based on questions submitted by porn viewers.”
And unlike state lawmakers, xHamster gives users a choice: After viewing a pop-up informing visitors that Utah has the highest per-capita porn consumption of any state—which was true, at least as of 2009—the site gives users an option to either click through to their beloved pornography or watch a video explaining what the oily man with the tribal tattoos is doing to that nice lady in said pornography. We’re guessing most Utahns will just watch the porn, but it’s a good effort nonetheless.