Porn: Good for America?

Reynolds: MSNBC.com:

"The number of rapes per capita in the United States has plunged by more than 85 percent since the 1970s, and reported rape fell last year even while other violent offenses increased, according to federal crime data.

Hmm. What's different since 1970? Lots of things, of course, though bared midriffs and short-shorts are back. But probably the most relevant difference is porn. In 1970, some people argued that porn caused rape. Since 1970, though, porn has exploded. In 1970 you had to work pretty hard to find porn. Now you have to work nearly as hard to avoid it.

But rape has gone down 85%."

I guess among our people its almost axiomatic that porn is evil, so color me unconvinced by this argurment. In fact, all violent crime massively declined throuthout the 1990s, so I'm thinking there are other causes for the decline in rape. Still, its an interesting thesis. A better way to establish a negative correlation between porn and rape would be to do a state by state or county by county analysis and try to isolate porn and rape and see if the statistics reveal any meaningful correlation after correcting for economic and racial environments.