Trump's Project 2025 calls for a complete ban on pornography and the imprisonment of those who create and distribute it.
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.
Their loosely defined pornography ban seems to encompass everything from online pornography and OnlyFans pages to Romance novels and sex education materials. The language of the Project 2025 report suggests the bans top priorities will be banning the works of LGBTQ+ artists and authors, and anyone who provides children with accurate materials on sex, sexuality and gender.
The writers of Project 2025 claim that modern pornography manifests in the “propagation of transgender ideology” (pg 6) and that pornography is “invading our school libraries.” (pg 1) They even go so far as calling for educators and public librarians to be imprisoned and registered as sex offenders if they provide children with this material (pg 6).
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.
This is not an empty or unprecedented threat.
According to a PEN America report, there were more than 2,500 instances of books being banned in schools in the 2021-2022 school year, affecting nearly 4 million children. Among the books that were banned, 41% included LGBTQ+ themes, 40% featured protagonists of color, and 22% featured sexual content. Even non-fiction titles providing children and teens with accurate information on puberty, sex, and relationships were banned.
Project 2025’s pornography ban is an extension of these ongoing efforts to keep children in the dark about sex, sexuality, and gender – and will keep all of us from expressing and enjoying our sexuality how we choose.