Democrats continue to leverage access to obscene sexual materials to appeal to young men.
M any of us recall a vulgar advertisement that a prominent Democrat-aligned group aired during the 2024 election cycle. The ad depicted a young man in his bedroom masturbating to pornographic materials, before a Republican politician suddenly appears and says: “Now that we’re in charge, we’re banning porn nationwide.” The message was simple: If you want to keep your pornography, you had better vote for Kamala Harris and Democrats.
In truth, no effort — then or now — to restrict access to even the most horrific forms of pornography among adults has gained significant political traction, whether in Congress or the states. Certainly, many of us would welcome moves such as a rollback of troubling judicial precedents that classify pornography as protected “free speech” under the First Amendment, investigations into the exploitative practices of pornography producers and host platforms, and other efforts to combat what has become a pornography epidemic among young people (boys and young men especially). But other than targeted policies focusing on minors (such as state-level age-verification laws), the political will to more comprehensively address pornography-related issues simply doesn’t yet seem to be there, even within much of the conservative movement.
In any case, despite Democrats’ attempts to make pornography a last-minute political issue in 2024, their stunt abjectly failed: According to surveys, Donald Trump gained significant ground among young men of diverse demographic groups in last year’s election.
That’s why we were amused (but not surprised) to see that prominent Democrats continue to attempt to make pornography a political issue as part of their multi-million-dollar quest to win over young men. Here’s a case in point: In a recent interview attacking Republicans in Congress, presidential aspirant and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — who has lately taken to sporting a beard and wearing lumberjack shirts — said, “Of course [Democrats] should be talking about how if Speaker [Mike] Johnson got his way . . . how he would want to regulate porn, [which] most people would have a problem with.”
Similarly, in response to a bill introduced by Republican Senator Mike Lee that would establish a federal definition of obscenity — proposed legislation that was misleadingly attacked by Democrats as making “all porn a federal crime” — Arizona Democratic Representative Yassamin Ansari stated, “This is how Democrats will win back young men.” And, of course, failed vice-presidential candidate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz — now making his own moves toward a future presidential campaign while arguing that his party’s defeat in 2024 occurred because Democrats were not progressive enough — has a long record of deploying pornography as a wedge issue to appeal to young male voters.
Now, we are not worried that such morally twisted efforts to pander to pornography users and addicts will pay political dividends. Surveys indicate that, unique compared to other age groups, equal percentages of our young adult men and women (those aged 18 to 29) consider pornography to be morally wrong, and that more young men consider it to be morally wrong than morally acceptable. While it’s true that there is generally less strident moral opposition to pornography among young men than men of older generations, there certainly isn’t a groundswell of support for pornography among young men, either.
More broadly, it is becoming increasingly evident that legions of young men are searching for meaning, value, and purpose. A widely read report in the New York Times last year highlighted the fact that, among Generation Z, men are now more likely to be religiously observant than women. And, as the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has usefully chronicled, the existence of an ongoing “vibe shift” — an increasing rejection of woke ideology and culture — among young people, particularly young men, seems nearly impossible to deny.
So, if the supposed allure of ensured access to artificial — and ultimately, unfulfilling — outlets for sexual gratification is what the progressive movement is peddling, today’s young men aren’t buying. Instead, young men are increasingly searching for something deeper, richer, and worthier, namely, fulfillment: the cultivation, necessarily in communion with others, of authentic human goods such as friendship, marriage, family, knowledge, beauty, honor, personal integrity, and a right relationship with God. They are looking for the true, the good, and the beautiful.
Even for the young man who struggles with pornography usage, it’s not something he’s proud of. It’s not what he ultimately wants for his life, and he certainly won’t be making political decisions based on promises to facilitate his access to means of sexual indulgence.
Our society and our country would massively benefit if, instead of attempting to psychosexually manipulate our young people for political purposes, Democratic lawmakers worked with Republicans to address important pornography related-issues, such as the accessibility of pornographic materials to children and the rampant (and well-documented) sexual exploitation within the pornography industry. Indeed, if Democrats’ effort to reach young men were sincere — that is, rooted in a good-faith and fair-minded effort to address their concerns — they would stop defending (much less promoting) pornography, and they would moderate their hard-left stances on social and cultural issues that have seriously tarnished the party’s brand among young men.
Given the stranglehold that powerful progressive forces have on the Democratic Party, from wealthy interest groups to the party’s increasingly dogmatic activist base, the likelihood that Democrats will undertake the substantive work necessary to make their party appealing to young men is perhaps low. Still, it must be stated that renewed efforts to double down on pornography constitute significant steps in the wrong direction.
To be sure, it’s grievously wrong as a matter of basic morality and decency. But even speaking merely in the realm of political practicalities, Democratic leaders are only fooling themselves if they think pushing access to pornography is going to win over young men. They’ve got young men — their priorities, concerns, and dreams — totally wrong.
Robert P. George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton. Matthew X. Wilson graduated from Princeton University in 2024.