Porn stars threw their hat in the political ring, rallying against right-wing efforts to ban X-rated content in a new advertising push.
The “Hands Off My Porn” campaign, launched on Monday by more than a dozen adult film actors, is a $100,000 initiative featured on porn sites, warning users that the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 seeks to ban adult content and imprison those producing it. The ads will run in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada.
“Conservatives are planning to criminalize porn,” the initiative’s website reads. “Don’t let them control what you watch!”
The 17 adult film actors leading the charge call themselves “pornstars for democracy.”
handsoffmyporn.com/Hands Off My Porn
Although the ad campaign is not officially tied to a presidential candidate (donations, however, are run through Democrat-led ActBlue), it makes an apparent appeal to young male voters, the largest consumers of the porn industry’s products. According to the Survey Center on American Life, 44 percent of men ages 18 to 29 and 57 percent of men ages 30 to 49 reportedly watched porn within the past month.
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is currently trailing Donald Trump among support from men.
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Throughout his 2024 presidential bid, Donald Trump has amped up campaign messaging to emphasize hypermasculinity and court young male voters.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
“While there are a lot of jerk-offs in Washington DC, the ones you should worry about are the right wing conservatives working to end the porn industry,” the “Hands Off My Porn” site says, pointing the finger at “140 Trump appointees” involved in Project 2025, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and JD Vance.
In a 2021 interview, Vance told Crisis Magazine: “I think the combination of porn, abortion have basically created a lonely, isolated generation that isn’t getting married, they’re not having families, and they’re actually not even totally sure how to interact with each other.”
While the Republican vice presidential nominee, much like his running mate, has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation, Vance wrote the foreword of a book written by one of Project 2025’s architects.
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 seeks to ban pornography and imprison those producing it.
Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
Demonizing X-rated content has long been part of right-wing political efforts. In recent months, Republican-led states including Texas, Indiana, and Nebraska established age-verification laws, many of which require porn sites to confirm a visitor’s age using a government ID.
One of Project 2025’s co-authors, Russell Vought, who served in Trump’s presidential administration, admitted in a leaked recording that these laws, lobbied for by the Heritage Foundation, seek to ban porn through the “back door.”
