New ads encourage porn users to vote for Kamala Harris

The porn industry often makes headlines for human trafficking, child sexual exploitation, or social media regulations, but this time the industry is in the news for posting political ads. With less than a month to go before the presidential election, a coalition of pornographic producers, distributors and performers are posting online ads encouraging porn users to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

The $100,000 “Hands Off My Porn” campaign claims former President Donald Trump will ban pornography if re-elected. The claim is based on policy recommendations in The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which Trump has repeatedly rejected.

Senior Trump campaign advisor Danielle Alvarez responded: “Since the fall of 2023, President Trump’s campaign has made it clear that only President Trump and the campaign, and NOT any other organization or former personnel, represent the policy for the second term.”

Project 2025 authors and “Trump allies” are labeled “crazies” in the ads, which claim Trump will jail porn producers. Holly Randall, a porn producer and “director” involved in the ad campaign, claimed that the Pornography Coalition has not coordinated with the Harris campaign or the Democratic Party, but plans to increase their advertising budget.

Despite Randall’s protests, Meg Kilgannon, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, noted that the Harris campaign should at least be aware of the advertising venture.

“It is now legal for outside groups to coordinate spending with presidential campaigns,” Kilgannon noted. She continued: “While the fact of the porn spending itself is shocking, the messaging surrounding Project 2025 and its targeting of swing states would lead one to believe that these ads are being coordinated with the (Democratic National Committee) and the Harris campaign.”

She continued, “Is this all the sitting Vice President of the United States has to offer those who use pornography: empty threats that porn will be banned if she loses? Does she hope to distract the young men in this demographic from the very real prospect that in a Harris-Walz administration they will be drafted into military service and shipped abroad to die on foreign soil?

Kilgannon concluded: “It would be better to promise lower taxes, lower prices and more jobs, but since Harris-Walz lacks credibility on these issues, it is not surprising that the expert fearmongers at DNC ​​would supplement their terrible abortion messages to women with porn-based ads for men.”

The ads will reportedly run in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. However, the claim that a second Trump administration would ban pornography may be at least partially undermined by the fact that more than a third of US states – including North Carolina and Georgia – have passed age verification laws to prevent minors from accessing online porn and pornography. behemoth PornHub has permanently ceased operations in many of those states.

When Utah passed age verification laws last year, PornHub’s parent company — then called MindGeek, now called Aylo — blocked access in Utah to PornHub and a number of other pornographic websites it owned.

PornHub has also closed in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia. When Internet users visit the site, they are now presented with a message criticizing state laws that prohibit minors from accessing pornography and urging porn users to contact their state representatives to file a complaint .

The ad campaign comes in the wake of Harris’ recent appearance on “Call Her Daddy,” a sex podcast known for its vulgar and explicit language.

Child protection and anti-trafficking advocates have noted in the past that pornography creates an increased demand for human trafficking, including child trafficking.

PornHub and its parent company even admitted in federal court last year that the companies profit from illegal sex trafficking: PornHub hosted videos from a sex trafficking porn production company and profited from those videos. According to court documents, PornHub and Aylo knew or should have known that the profits they received came from human trafficking.

There are a number of allegations that PornHub and other major pornography distributors knowingly host and profit from human trafficking and videos depicting rape, pedophilia, bestiality, and other deviant content.

Originally published by The Washington Stand