Masculine Policy: The GOP’s Plan To Outlaw ‘Porn’ And Suspend The First Amendment 

Does watching porn threaten your masculinity? Science says it doesn’t. 

Is porn addictive? No, it’s not. Is sexual expression that is consenting legally protected by the First Amendment? Yes, it is. 

So, why do Republicans fight to restrict or outlaw pornography across the United States? 

There are several reasons. First, religious conservatives have long argued that pornography and non-traditional sexual expression were an insult to God or something like that. 

Second, the post-Trump GOP is rife with hate for virtually anything related to sexual freedom, like LGBTQ+ equality and representation in mainstream culture. 

Shit, just look at how triggered the right got with the Dylan Mulvaney campaign for the domestic beer brand Bud Light. 

Or the push in schools to censor classical literature, such as the works of William Shakespeare.

All of this follows the same line of reasoning. And that reasoning is that Republicans and right-wing folks are conditioned and fearful of a true counterculture built for the digital age. 

The internet, tech, social media, video games, streaming services, porn, and many other standard fixtures in online culture and digital life feed this belief that a shadowy cabal of leftist elites wants to destroy the United States. 

This is a mass panic attack over manufactured or overblown fears. But this isn’t going to stop far-right politicians and their allies from capitalizing on this fear. 

Consider a case scenario. I originally pitched this column to Techdirt to address the political and cultural worldview of Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri. 

Sen. Hawley has carved out a conservative persona built on how hard he pushes a depiction of the ideal example of classic American “masculinity.” 

In his most recent book on culture and the role of men in society, Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs, Hawley espouses a worldview that relies heavily on debunked notions of masculinity that do not correspond to present-day life. 

While his book is touted in conservative circles as a text of insight, most people either don’t care about Hawley’s musings or he’s being mocked by a growing number of men’s groups who say that his views on masculinity are toxic, chauvinistic, and highly homophobic. 

Washington Post reporter Tara Bahrampour recently reported on groups taking an alternative approach to a so-called cowboy mentality.

The alternative these groups advocate for leaves room for vulnerability and the development of emotional intelligence and intimacy with romantic partners and friends—especially men. 

In my view, the approach of a more vulnerable and accepting masculinity has very little to do with one’s hobbies, career choices, sexual interests, or political viewpoints. 

Building on this moral panic and the fear that leftists are turning American men into total betas, Hawley resorts to his famed belief that playing video games or watching pornography denies one’s ability to be entirely masculine. He sounds like those annoying pro-semen retention “alpha male” life coaches on X.

Worldviews like Hawley’s and these so-called alpha male grifters manifest into political and social action that emulates much of the modern GOP. I used Sen. Hawley’s nonsense as a framing device for this column because his politics and worldview accurately reflect the outrageously misguided claims of a coalition of socially conservative think tanks. DAME Magazine reported on a right-wing think tank-backed initiative called Project 2025. 

The project is essentially a conceptual framework for a conservative (not GOP, which is hilariously ironic) president-elect if the 2024 Presidential Election results favor a potential Republican nominee. It’s like a pre-transition blueprint for a possible Republican presidential transition team. 

Project 2025’s main product is a long-winded guide on Republican-backed policies dealing with everything from defense spending, taxation policy, foreign policy, climate change, environmental policy, safety-net and welfare administration, immigration, social justice issues, and others.

These recommendations are bound together in the project’s official policy guide, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.

DAME contributor Brynn Tannehill characterized this as the Project 2025 “playbook.” I call it a hyperpartisan manifesto that seeks to set back American democratic processes by over five decades. Compiled and written by researchers and fellows at dozens of groups like the Heritage Foundation, Independent Women’s Forum, and Southern Poverty Law Center-labeled hate groups like Moms for Liberty, Mandate for Leadership calls for aggressive action against what these people view as pornography. In a foreword by Heritage Foundation’s president Kevin D Roberts, he outlines a vision of a United States free of “pornography.” Here are some selected passages from the very frighteningly short-sighted, fascistic, and irrational words of Roberts:

“Look at America under the ruling and cultural elite today:…children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries.”

“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 an illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. 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.”

Is that a free America? I think not. Not only does Roberts openly state that the right to free speech should be suspended, he wishes to criminalize “pornographers.” 

Using his loaded parlance, the term in this context refers to not just online tube site operators, adult film producers, consenting performers, and a regulated entertainment industry subject to scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Justice at any time; he lumps in young adult authors, teachers, school administrators, librarians, tech companies, doctors, transgender rights activists, drag queens, and the parents of LGBTQ+ youth into the same category. 

Roberts adds that American citizens do not need reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, so-called gender ideology, critical race theory, or sex education in school. Instead, he and his colleagues support a 1950s-esque pro-family mantra that is only ideal to straight Christian conservative types who listen to gospel music and cultishly watch alarmist talking heads on Fox News. 

In all fairness, some groups collaborating on this project aren’t “far-right” or even worried about the implications of far-reaching religious conservatism. These particular groups are mainly astroturf groups for large corporations and are only engaged to push for loosening specific regulations, like climate policy. But their involvement and affiliation with Heritage and legitimate hate groups advocating for the censorship of speech protected by the First Amendment completely overshadows any well-meaning intent behind their contributions, regardless of their subject matter being solely focused on freer economics and government regulatory drawbacks. 

Let that sink in, everybody. 

Focusing on the Heritage Foundation, this blueprint relies on the belief that big tech firms are making kids trans or that requiring age verification to access social media or porn is a viable policy to counter child sexual exploitation online. Heritage Foundation personnel openly admitted to using the proposed Kids Online Safety Act to block youth from accessing content that deals with LGBTQ+ subject material, even if the material in question isn’t legally considered pornography per case law and most mainstream interpretations of the obscenity statutes. 

Heritage and company also advocate criminalizing pornography, as stated in that all-American Mein Kampf sequel I quoted above. The Mandate also calls for repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. They also call for TikTok to be banned because of the right’s Sino-phobic belief that Communist China is about to destroy their biggest consumer goods market.

And, I renew the claim that all of this is intrinsically connected and is a derivative of the views held by folks like Sen. Hawley as they relate to masculinity and politics in the United States. Think of the Mandate of Leadership as “Josh-Hawley-ism” in practice. 

You can read all of this on the Project 2025 website. Be sure to have your barf bag ready because this uncontrollable dumpster fire of a policy treatise is one of the most pretentious, racist, sexist, anti-science, xenophobic, anti-freedom, and anti-American things I’ve ever read. 

Michael McGrady covers the tech and legal sides of the online porn business. He is the contributing editor for AVN.com, covering politics, adult business, and legal.