Analysis: How Harris, Vance Stack Up in 2024's 'Porn Election'

WASHINGTON—Vice President Kamala Harris has officially replaced her boss, incumbent Democrat President Joe Biden, as the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for the U.S. presidency. While she has not yet been named the nominee, and the Democratic National Convention (DNC) for this year has yet to take place in Chicago, Harris received an outpouring of support from top-level Democratic lawmakers and DNC delegates from the states. In an already tumultuous election, Biden passing the torch to his 2020 running mate revitalizes the Democrats in a bid to beat Donald Trump and his running mate, far-right Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance.  How does this impact the adult industry and commercial sex work? That may be a bit difficult to forecast at this point, but Harris' entry into the race most certainly redraws the election for the presidency. At the time of this writing, Harris has yet to name a running mate who would be the Democrats' nominee for vice president. In the first days of her presidential campaign, Harris raised over $100 million.  Journalists across the political spectrum observe that Trump is now the old and deteriorating candidate for the presidency. Anne Applebaum, a staff writer for The Atlantic, authored a column titled "Suddenly Trump Looks Older and More Deranged." She commented, "Now it is the Republicans who are saddled with the elderly candidate, the one who can’t make a clear argument or finish a sentence without veering off into anecdote." All of these developments are mere footnotes to the role pornography has played in the 2024 Presidential Election. Harris, Trump and J.D. Vance, and other stakeholders have turned 2024 into the "porn election." Trump and Stormy Daniels. Vance and his alignment with the anti-porn, far-right Project 2025 network. And Harris and her work to defend the criminalization of sex workers. To begin, consider Kamala Harris and her record on sex workers' rights. Harris rose to prominence as the California Attorney General. A Democrat and "top cop" for the state, she has a mixed reputation. For example, when she served as the San Francisco District Attorney, she opposed a proposal to decriminalize sex work. Proposition K was on the local ballot in November 2008 and was a bid to "prohibit the police from using public resources to investigate and prosecute charges of prostitution." Harris is on record calling the measure "completely ridiculous," via an article on the measure from the New York Times archive. In 2020, LGBTQ+ news outlet Them pointed out Proposition K was a response to longstanding research and advocacy to prevent harm to sex workers. She also defended the criminalization of sex work and for further carceral action against consensual sex work because it facilitates the spread of HIV and AIDS. In 2019, a critic said Harris "has spent her career building the carceral state." An interview with The Root published in 2019 features Harris, a senator for California in Washington, D.C. at the time. She said that her stance on sex work criminalization had softened. When the interviewer asked about her position on the decriminalization of sex work and whether she supported it, Harris simply said, "I think so. I do." She then explained, during her time as a prosecutor, that she preferred arresting pimps and buyers over sex workers. Several sex workers' aid groups and nonprofits characterized this as an endorsement of a "Nordic" model of regulating sex buying. Also, during her tenure as attorney general, she instigated criminal action against Backpage.com and its former owners. At the time, Harris and her office charged Michael Lacey and the late James Larkin with felony conspiracy to commit pimping. In addition, also while a U.S. senator, Harris co-sponsored and voted in favor of FOSTA/SESTA, which gutted safe harbor provisions in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. At the other end of the political spectrum, there is someone who is just as bad, if not worse than Harris, on issues related to sexual expression and other forms of First Amendment-protected speech. Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, was named former President Donald Trump's running mate and nominee for the vice presidency during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wis. last week. A hypocrite to many, Vance is a convert to Trump's movement after years of criticizing the former president. Vance even compared Trump to Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Nazi Germany who oversaw the genocide of millions of Jews, Romani, queer people and political rivals during the Second World War. Vance's criticism of Trump hasn't discredited him in any way, it appears.  Vance was named to the top of the Republican ticket just days after the former president survived an assassination attempt on his life. Sen. Vance, spry and young compared to aging Trump, ultimately serves as the  Republican Party's lifeline if something were to happen to Trump if he wins his second term in office. A typical anti-LGBTQ+, religious conservative, Vance is a godsend for a right-wing movement that has gone fully populist. He is a frightening figure as it relates to sexual rights and bodily autonomy. As a candidate for the senate, Vance told a far-right Roman Catholic magazine that he thinks pornography should be banned in a bid to protect families.  "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," Vance told Crisis Magazine. The story covered a summit of young "new right" conservatives who are convinced that sex outside of marriage or having the right to make their own reproductive choices is sinful conduct. Vance added that he wants to ban porn in its entirety. This worldview links up to Project 2025. AVN has previously reported on the project, which presents itself as a conservative "presidential transition project." Organized by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a network of right-leaning groups and policy proposals that they believe Trump should champion if he returns to the White House in 2025. These proposals are outlandish, culture-war responses that lack a legal basis. For instance, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts wrote in the foreword of the Mandate for Leadership—the project's nearly 1,000-page policy treatise—that pornography should be stripped of its First Amendment rights and that "pornographers" should be imprisoned. Roberts characterizes "pornography" as a catch-all term to include anything that even remotely deals with LGBTQ+ subject matter, reproductive rights or bodily autonomy. Vance and Roberts have a lot in common politically. Both believe that "gender ideology" threatens the country's youth and have called for bans on various things such as pornography. Vance and Roberts also agree with Trump that Section 230, colloquially the "First Amendment of the internet," should be repealed or significantly changed, which could have lasting damage to freedom of expression online if this were to happen. All of this proves even more ironic given that the person both are stumping for, directly and indirectly, is Donald Trump—the same Donald Trump who appeared on the cover of Playboy in 1990 and had an affair with AVN Hall of Famer Stormy Daniels that he covered up to sway the 2016 election in his favor. Additionally, Trump is still a convicted felon in the state of New York for falsifying business records in a conspiracy to cover up the affair with Daniels. Normally, this conduct wouldn't be considered so controversial or disconcerting for a rich oligarch such as Trump.  But it shows that the anti-porn right wing in the political landscape is willing to side with anyone they think could be amenable to censoring protected speech and violating the rights of millions of women and LGBTQ+ people. While a potential Harris administration is potentially more palatable than a Trump-Vance administration, this election proves there is no longer any middle ground.