In a statement published Tuesday, the Free Speech Coalition (FSC) highlighted the ways in which “Project 2025,” a conservative policy blueprint championed by the Heritage Foundation, “threatens the rights of sex workers and the LGBTQ+ community.”
“As we celebrate Pride Month, it’s crucial to reflect on the progress we’ve made and the challenges that lie ahead,” FSC said in the statement. “This year, a significant threat comes from Project 2025, an aggressive and dangerous right-wing policy proposal that could have severe implications for our industry and community.”
As YNOT noted in previous coverage of Project 2025, the sprawling policy document explicitly calls for aggressive prosecution of porn producers and distributors. In Tuesday’s statement, FSC observed Project 2025 “details a wide range of policy proposals, from immigration and voting rights to healthcare and taxation, that would fundamentally reshape society using executive power.”
“The impact would be vast, and censorship of ‘pornography’ is central to this project,” FSC added “The mandate calls for banning “pornography” — broadly defined to include LGBTQ+ content — and imprisoning those who distribute it.”
“Project 2025 bans both pornography and LGBTQ+ content and criminalizes those who own or share it,” FSC observed. “In fact, Project 2025 declares any and all LGBTQ content as pornographic in nature, thus criminalizing it and placing LGBTQ parents, educators, and public librarians at risk of prosecution for allowing people to access LGBTQ+ literature, resources and other content under severe laws targeting pornography.”
FSC argued that in “calling for the imprisonment of those who produce or distribute adult content, Project 2025 advocates for the arrest of millions of adult content creators — a War on Porn that might mimic the War on Drugs.”
“This risk to anyone working in the sex industry is enormous but given the project’s twin concerns about LGBTQ+ content, would likely fall most heavily on LGBTQ+ sex workers, pushing them further into the margins, and increasing risk of violence and exploitation,” FSC added.
The FSC statement also called attention to Project 2025’s advocacy of overturning key legal protections affecting both the adult industry and the LGBTQ+ community.
“The alarming precedent set by the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade was unfortunately just the beginning,” FSC wrote. “The right to sexual privacy and bodily autonomy underpins both abortion rights and the rights of the adult industry. The Dobbs decision suggests that rights not ‘deeply rooted’ in history, including sexual privacy and autonomy, are not constitutionally protected…Historically, both the adult industry and the LGBTQ+ community were terrorized by laws criminalizing private sexual conduct — just as those in criminalized sectors of sex work still are. Project 2025 promises a world in which vice raids, police surveillance, and the constant threat of arrest loom large.”
You can read the full FSC statement on Project 2025 here. For YNOT’s previous coverage of Project 2025 and its implications for the adult industry, click here.
