Donald Trump’s electoral win could lead to porn being banned in the United States, as it is a key agenda item in Project 2025.
The introduction to Project 2025, written by the president of the D.C.-based Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, who has a PhD in American History, states: “Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.
“Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”
Despite denying knowledge of the manifesto throughout his campaign, Donald Trump told California’s KFI radio station in October that he would be bringing Project 2025 contributor and former Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan on board his team in office.
The path to banning porn goes through The Supreme Court. The court created a legal standard for pornography and ‘obscene’ art in 1972 via their Miller vs California decision, which determined that the First Amendment protects sexual material so long as it passes the three-pronged test of being seen as appropriate by the ‘average’ community member, it is not clearly offensive as determined by applicable state law, and that it has literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
Much like the push to overturn Roe vs Wade, given that porn is protected by a Supreme Court decision, a new lawsuit brought to the now right-leaning bench could result in the end of not only the porn industry as we know it, but also sex education, and large sections of the entertainment industry.
If ‘artistic’ sex scenes are judged as obscene and illegal by the Supreme Court under the Trump administration, that paves the way for no more Bridgerton, Fifty Shades-style books, or Game of Thrones.
Project 2025 makes it clear that they will be coming after porn under a First Amendment suit.
The introduction to the manifesto reads: “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. It has no claim to First Amendment protection.
“Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime.”
It is unclear how Project 2025’s vow to shutter telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate the spread of pornography will measure up to Elon Musk’s influence in the incoming White House, as per NPR reporting, sex bots are a frequent feature on X (formerly Twitter), a technological platform owned by Musk.