Leading Gay Performers Warn About Project 2025
LOS ANGELES — Several leading gay performers spoke last week to Pride.com about the upcoming election, sharing their concern about the conservative Project 2025 plan to criminalize the production and distribution of adult content.
The article aims to educate gay porn enthusiasts about the risks for adult entertainment in the event of the implementation of the Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025 agenda.
“If Donald Trump and the far-right architects behind Project 2025 get their way,” wrote Porn.com’s Ricky Cornish and Ariel Messman-Rucker, “online porn may go the way of the dinosaurs because porn will be banned, the producers and distributors will be sent to prison, and the tech companies that circulate it will be shut down — no, really.”
The article highlights the work of the #HandsOffMyPorn campaign led by Holly Randall and 16 other adult industry performers and directors, to purchase ad space on adult sites targeting the seven swing states that may decide the 2024 presidential election — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada.
“I obviously fully support the ad campaign and the message that we as porn stars need to send out to the masses,” said reigning XBIZ Gay Performer of the Year Derek Kage. “Project 2025 not only aims to make Trump the most unchecked president in modern United States history, but also aims to erase decades of progress that we have made as Americans. It aims to erase adult entertainment which is without question constitutionally-protected free speech. Getting this message out is extremely important to ensure Project 2025 doesn’t set into motion a major attack on our protected freedoms and to enjoy adult entertainment.”
Kage said ads targeted to young men who enjoy gay porn “need to be blunt and right to the point as soon as they air: something like ‘This video/site/studio could get banned if you don’t vote.’ We can’t sugar coat anything when it comes to Project 2025.
“I’m obviously nervous if Trump wins the election and the tenants of Project 2025 are implemented,” Kage continued. “Not just for porn but also for our daily lives. Could you imagine what adult entertainment would look like if conservatives banned porn? We would go back to the days where a woman showing a little leg was considered salacious. Putting consenting adults in jail for recording themselves having sex? It’s terrifying to think about.”
Jkab Ethan Dale concurred with Kage that “targeting people in places that are directly affected is a great strategy. Cigarette warning labels changed the way we look at smoking, and #HandsOffMyPorn” could do the same with adult content.
“Anyone in porn, and who watches porn should be concerned,” Dale told Pride.com. “This 900-page document outlines a very extreme Republican Agenda that Trump is a part of. Every vote matters, from your local representatives, to congress, all the way up to the presidency. This is the most important election of our lifetime.”
Noted performer Michael Boston said he feels “every drop in the bucket counts when it comes to helping voters understand their possible choices. I think the ads could sway voters of any gender identity and/or sexual orientation. This is free speech. It would be so crazy to censor porn. Especially when the only people who want that are religious zealots, who like to gain piety and yet they have their own insidious skeletons in their closets.”
The Pride.com piece also consulted Dom King, Tony Genius, Lil Buff Bro, Damien, Jordan Starr and AltSHIFT Films producers Sam and Ed.
Sam and Ed shared their view that “it’s so important to get the word out that our fundamental freedoms are under attack, because these kinds of policies often go unseen and uncommented upon until it’s too late. To see pornographers articulating our worries and directly addressing our audience makes us proud that our industry is standing up to the interests of patriarchal institutions and disingenuous charlatans who stigmatize healthy sexual expression as a means of control.”
