Are porn and LGBT rights connected?
In January, Conner Habib, a gay adult-film actor, was approached by a “curious and thoughtful group” of Corning Community College students, including Brandon Griewank, the president of the LGBT group Equal on campus, who invited him to be a speaker for Sex Week, a “sex-positive community event” the college was hosting in March. Other presentations would be given by members of Planned Parenthood and the Rape Crisis Center. However, as Buzzfeed reports, less than a week before the event was to take place, the college’s president, Katherine Douglas canceled Conner’s talk, stating that she “in no way was about to let porn rights and LGBT rights become intertwined on her campus.”
Because Conner’s speaking fee and airfare were covered as part of his contract, he suggested to Griewank that they could find a venue off campus for his talk, but he told Buzzfeed, “That’s when things started getting worse.” Griewank was confronted by Donald Heins, the Dean of Student Development, and told “not to involve himself with any further plans” for the talk, on or off campus. Griewank also said Heins said, “I wasn’t allowed to speak to the press … I wasn’t allowed to help Conner … He said, ‘I hope you grasp this, Brandon, that this issue is bigger than you and bigger than Equal.”
In an essay Conner wrote for Buzzfeed titled “Why Are We Afraid To Talk About Gay Porn?” he explains,
I was informed by Corning Community College Vice President and Dean of Student Development, Don Heins, that the school’s president, Katherine Douglas, had singled out my talk and decided to cancel it, against student wishes … I wasn’t scheduled to speak about porn, but to talk more broadly on sex and culture. The reason I was banned was because she’d changed her mind after discovering that I was not, as she’d thought, an educator who used to be in porn, but rather a university instructor before I started appearing in adult films … I was told she stated, emphatically and more than once, that pornography cannot and should not be linked to LGBT rights.
In a miniature echo of pornography’s place in culture, where millions of people watch and want pornography but are told not to want it, not to watch it, the students and community—particularly the LGBT community, which was singled out in the president’s reasoning—were told not to want or hear a discussion that they’d asked for. The school had undone the work and determination of the LGBT community. What could be left but loneliness?
To deny the importance of images of gay sex while pretending to affirm gay rights, as Katherine Douglas does, is a luxury, and it’s dangerous one. It’s the equivalent of cheering on a powerless gay neighbor in a 1990s sitcom, or to say, “I don’t care what anyone does in the privacy of his own home, but don’t bring it out into public.” In other words, it’s not an effort to understand gay men as whole human beings but to merely establish sexless caricatures of them to feel comfortable about.
Corning Community College administration of course denies telling any student that they could not attend Conner’s talk off campus, and William Little, the spokesman for the school released a statement which said, “Corning Community College has no intention of interfering in any way with our students’ protected rights. Our students are free to express themselves and attend any events they choose.” However, Little also said that Conner was not an “appropriate speaker. ” He said, “Mr. Habib’s celebrity status as an adult film star is inconsistent with the educational theme of this program. Mr. Habib’s contract was paid-in-full, yet we respectfully declined his participation. Our students are free to express themselves and attend any events they choose.”
Photo: sara biljana/Flickr
Read more from Conner Habib:
Why Do Gay Porn Stars Kill Themselves?
