WASHINGTON—A coalition of Republican-leaning and socially conservative think tanks and advocacy groups are calling for pornography in its entirety to be outlawed if a right-wing president wins over incumbent Joe Biden in the 2024 Presidential Election. Project 2025 is the brainchild of the Heritage Foundation, which had significant influence over the Trump White House.
Organized as a "presidential transition" task force of far-right policy and political science academics, Project 2025 released a marquee policy guide they say would serve as the blueprint for the next Republican president and that person's first 180 days in office. The project's official guide is entitled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, and includes over 900 pages.
Mandate for Leadership is arranged by federal cabinet departments and independent agencies in the executive branch with recommendations ranging from blocking access to reproductive health care in publicly funded health insurance programs to drawing back regulatory power held by organizations such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
It features the input of the Republican Party's ivory tower elite and a flight of groups who are simply astroturfing for large corporations and do not care for the current culture wars.
While the document itself is wide-ranging, it is the words of Heritage Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts that are causing alarm in adult industry circles. In the foreword, Roberts releases a rhetorical rant on the widespread nature of what he and his allies consider to be "pornography."
"Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare," writes Roberts, adding that pornography “has no claim to First Amendment protection."
The text adds that porn's “purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as an illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.” Roberts additionally lumps together separate issues, which is a common tactic by these organizations. He links adult entertainment production, transgender rights activism, and the availability of LGBTQ subject matter in school libraries as the same issue. He also calls for bans on gender ideology, critical race theory, and "transgenderism."
DAME contributor Brynn Tannehill, in a recent essay for the magazine, characterized this as the Republican Party's "master plan" to criminalize being trans and LGBTQ.
Mike Stabile of adult industry trade group the Free Speech Coalition shared his alarm at Roberts' words in a Monday post on X (formerly Twitter). "And, of course, when they say 'porn' they mean ANY information related to LGBTQ+ lives. (I'm not being hyperbolic here — they want librarians to be registered as sex offenders) These are the same groups pushing to have you submit your ID to look at porn ... so you do the math," Stabile posted.
Allie Awesome, director of talent recruitment at ePlay.com and a content creator, having reposted Stabile, commented, “I will gladly be the first person to go to prison for producing [porn] under their draconian, anti-speech law. Come at me, Republicans. I dare you."
The likelihood of successfully outlawing porn is virtually nil. But, conservatives can certainly do as much as they can to try and restrict or censor sexual expression in all of its forms. For example, remember that the Heritage Foundation supports the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). Heritage confirmed on social media that it would use the internet censorship bill as a way to block content dealing with LGBTQ subject matter from minors on the internet, especially trans content.
Other groups collaborating on Project 2025 are just as extreme, and feature the input of organizations like Moms for Liberty. Moms for Liberty was classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an extremist hate group, with Alliance Defending Freedom and others. The American Principles Project, led by Terry Schilling, is also involved with Project 2025. Schilling has claimed in recent weeks that his group had a hand in pushing age verification laws in Republican states.
