WASHINGTON — Conservative education activist and Project 2025 contributor Corey DeAngelis issued a statement Tuesday, following allegations that he performed in gay porn videos under the name Seth Rose almost a decade ago.
DeAngelis posted on X, “Just like everyone else, I have made mistakes throughout my life, learned from those mistakes, used that as an opportunity to grow and tried to channel that experience into something positive. I was a victim of poor decisions and poor influences. I have turned that experience into the fuel that fires me to save young people from being put in the same position I was put in and to help parents protect their children.”
Although DeAngelis was a rising figure in right-wing politics and a culture warrior embraced by the Heritage Foundation and similar outfits, research indicates that his outing as a former sex worker was not the work of left-of-center ideological opponents, but a result of factional infighting within conservative circles, specifically the anti-public-school movement of which he was part.
DeAngelis is listed as one of the contributors to Project 2025 in the controversial 900-page handbook "Mandate for Leadership" issued by the Heritage Foundation-led initiative, which includes an explicit call to criminalize the production and distribution of pornography.
DeAngelis is also a prominent contributor to Heritage Foundation publications, and has been actively championed by the foundation head and current leader and principal apologist for Project 2025, Kevin Roberts.
Gossip and ‘MAGA Infighting’
On Sept. 20, far-right Texas news site Current Revolt published a gossip piece as part of its “Many People Are Saying” column, stating that DeAngelis was “allegedly the star of several videos hosted on gay porn websites. The man, who looks and sounds exactly like DeAngelis, can be seen masturbating and performing other lewd acts. In one video he participates in what the video calls a ‘jerk-off race.’”
The Current Revolt post — which included graphic photos — was picked up by gay porn news site Str8UpGayPorn, which republished the allegation, mocking the right-wing aspect of the story.
“Today,” the Str8UpGayPorn blog post reads, “we have a lesser known right-wing freak being exposed for his erotic antics, and this one’s been endorsed by Donald Trump for his work to dismantle the public school system in favor of ‘school choice,’ a.k.a. for-profit education that enriches corporate billionaires while leaving students uneducated and teachers’ unions gutted. His name is Corey DeAngelis, and he’s a senior fellow at the ghoulish American Federation for Children, but in 2014, he was better known as GayHoopla’s Seth Rose, a ‘hot otter’ who appeared in multiple gay porn scenes.
“News of DeAngelis’ work as a gay porn star was surprisingly exposed by another psychotic right-wing group in Texas (you have to love MAGA infighting) called Current Revolt, but it’s not clear if his gay porn past will have any impact on his role as a member of the ‘anti-woke,’ far-right cabal of brain-dead dipshits,” the post continued.
The item was then picked up by more mainstream LGBTQ+ sources such as The Advocate and Them, which led to wider coverage by less specialized outlets.
By the end of the week, DeAngelis’ main employer, the Betsy DeVos-backed anti-public-education organization American Federation for Children, had placed him on leave pending an investigation and erased his name from its website. He was later reportedly fired.
Casualty of a Civil War Among Anti-Public-School Activists
An in-depth account of the situation was published Sept. 24 by conservative education news site The 74 Million, whose funders are part of the conservative “school reform” and “school choice” movements. DeAngelis wrote extensively for the site between 2018 and 2023, during his time as a fellow at conservative think tank the Hoover Institution.
According to 74 Million writer Linda Jacobson, the gay porn allegations against DeAngelis resulted from “MAGA-infighting” involving Texas groups that view school voucher programs as “government encroachment.”
Jacobson explains that the Current Revolt gossip piece was preceded in July by a thread on X by conservative podcaster Sarah Fields, in which she mainly expressed opposition to the pro-voucher/school choice movement but included a side note reading, “Corey A. DeAngelis, the face of school choice, was a model that catered to the gay community,” along with what appears to be a shirtless photo of DeAngelis.
Jacobson writes that Fields took credit for having provoked questions about De Angelis’ past with her post, but also gave Current Revolt credit for “digging into gay porn sites to find the film and other photos.”
Libertarians Come to DeAngelis' Defense
On Tuesday, after DeAngelis’ post about being “a victim of poor decisions and poor influences,” the libertarian magazine Reason published an article by Robby Soave labeling DeAngelis’ loss of his lucrative engagements “classic cancel culture.”
“He is being punished for a regretted incident from his distant past that has nothing to do with his current job,” Soave writes. “Conservative organizations may well have morals clauses in their contracts, and they are free to hire and fire at will. But any institution that purports to oppose cancel culture, yet refuses to work with DeAngelis on this basis, is engaged in hypocrisy.”
DeAngelis has worked with the Reason Foundation, which publishes Reason magazine, as well as with the libertarian Cato Institute.
Free Speech Coalition’s Director of Public Affairs Mike Stabile told XBIZ that DeAngelis “seems to be the latest casualty in a war raging on the right between establishment Republicans and more conspiracy-minded far-right groups.”
“In some ways, it’s the reverse of what we saw last month with Mark Robinson in North Carolina, where more establishment voices leaked the gubernatorial candidate’s browsing history in an effort to force a more aggressive right-winger out of that race.”
For Stabile, the lesson in both cases is clear: “When you ally with groups who don’t respect sexuality or privacy, you risk them eventually coming for you.”