PATTTAYA, Thailand – Mike Stabile of the Free Speech Coalition (FSC) and Polari Media is this week’s guest on the Adult Site Broker Talk podcast, the show announced today. Today’s show is part one of two of a new interview with Stabile, who is making his third appearance on the show.
“Stabile is a journalist and documentary filmmaker who has spent over a decade writing about and advocating for sex workers and issues related to sexual expression,” the show explained in the announcement. “His work has appeared in prominent outlets such as The Daily Beast, Salon, Buzzfeed, Playboy, and The New York Times. His documentary “Seed Money,” which profiles pornographer and philanthropist Chuck Holmes, was recognized by The Advocate as one of the Best Documentaries of 2015.”
In addition to serving as the Director of Communications for the FSC since 2013, Stabile founded Polari Media “to help underrepresented communities and unconventional businesses connect with mainstream audiences.”
Among its many roles, FSC “functions as a resource, a leader, and a tool for the communities that they serve,” Adult Site Broker Talk noted in the announcement. “They take pride in fighting to alleviate the social stigma, misinformation, and discriminatory policies that affect those who work in and adjacent to the adult industry.”
In part one of the new interview, Stabile provides an update on the FSC’s campaign to combat age-verification legislation that has proliferated at the state level in recent years.
“Every time one of those bills pops up, we have to stop and take a look at what that bill is,” Stabile said. “We have to take a look at what is its chance of passing. We have to take a look at what is our ability to influence that bill, right? Obviously, our ability to influence a bill in California might be different than our ability to influence a bill in South Carolina, both in terms of our resources and our resources, in terms of the politics of the state.”
Stabile noted that over the course of 2023 and 2024, “we saw a bunch of these bills get introduced and immediately started springing into action.”
“A bill would get passed, we would contact the legislators who had introduced it, introduced ourselves, to see if we could get a meeting to talk about the bills, reach out to legislators who might be opposed to those bills or allies in the state that might know a little bit about it,” Stabile explained. “Now, again, when you’re dealing with 50 bills and probably two dozen states, different states, it’s hard to do a full court press on each one. I think that that’s part of the strategy that we’re seeing behind this legislation. It is, as we’ve seen so many other aspects of our government, there’s a flood-the-zone strategy. It doesn’t take a ton to introduce a bill. It takes a lot to fight a bill. You have to start being strategic.”
Bruce the adult site broker, host of the show and CEO of Adult Site Broker said it’s “always great having Mike on Adult Site Broker Talk,” adding that in part one of the new conversation with Stabile, “we discussed the latest in the age verification wars and more.”
You can listen to part one of the new interview with Mike Stabile now on AdultSiteBrokerTalk.com. To keep up with the latest news and updates from FSC, follow the organization on X @FSCArmy.
