LOS ANGELES — Cherie DeVille has penned an editorial for the Daily Beast, warning about ongoing anti-porn crusading by Ohio’s Senator-elect J. D. Vance.
Titled “J.D. Vance Is Coming for Your Porn — Watch Out,” the piece was published yesterday and tackles head-on the Republican’s censorship agenda.
The year 2022, DeVille explained, “has been one of the best and worst years to be a porn star. On the one hand, OnlyFans continued to help performers sell their content, driving a significant comeback for an industry that had nearly died because of online piracy. But while becoming a sex worker is less stigmatized than ever in some circles, backlash brewed in other arenas. Right-wing evangelical Laila Mickelwait teamed up with billionaire Bill Ackman to demand credit card companies stop processing payments on PornHub, and the protests worked.”
DeVille predicts that the War on Porn could intensify into the next year, due to Vance’s long-standing hostility toward free speech that involves sexual content.
As XBIZ reported, Vance — a finance exec, memoirist and personal protege of tech investor and Elon Musk associate Peter Thiele who was narrowly elected in November — has called for an outright ban on porn.
“I think the combination of porn, abortion have basically created a really lonely, isolated generation that isn’t getting married, they’re not having families and they’re actually not even totally sure how to interact with each other,” he told Catholic magazine Crisis in 2021.
Vance’s proclamations, DeVille explained, come at a time when “fringe extremists, including Ye (the rapper formerly known as Kanye West), are pushing for porn prohibition. Their demands may lack legal grounding, but they pose serious threats.”
If Vance were merely “a lone anti-porn senator,” DeVille continued, “he would be frightening but less dangerous. Unfortunately, many other Republicans hold anti-porn views, including Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice.”
Among more fringe right-wing elements, DeVille continued, Ye “pushed a gross antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews operated MindGeek to poison people’s minds” during a very recent visit to Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes’ streaming show.
DeVille also warned that politicians and fringe voices can create “a mood that stifles speech,” noting the harm to sex worker rights and free speech that the activism of powerful, wealthy, well-connected activists such as Ackman can bring.
Although the California-based DeVille thinks she herself can ride out the anti-porn backlash, she worries that “pornographers in red states and younger stars could find their livelihoods threatened by political leaders like Vance. Sure, there wasn’t a red wave in the midterms, but it doesn’t take a red wave to threaten speech. As Ackman and others show, it just takes a few loud, rich nutjobs.”
To read “J.D. Vance Is Coming for Your Porn — Watch Out,” visit the Daily Beast.
Main Image: Cherie DeVille (Photo: Gustavo Turner)
