Editor’s Note: This is the third in a three-part series on Project 2025 

The first “promise” of Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership” is to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.” Eight paragraphs into the introduction to this promise, the document takes aim at pornography.

“Pornography…is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.”

There is much to unpack there, which I will leave to brighter (and braver) minds than mine. But until every Project 2025 contributing author publicly releases their internet browser history, I’m going to make the safe assumption that none of this statement is actually about pornography.

What it is about, instead, are the words in the quote above represented by the ellipses. The first sentence in that quote, complete with those missing words, reads:

“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare.”

For those of us who spent seasons of our lives being discipled by a mix of Focus on the Family, Rush Limbaugh and pastors who preached behind plexiglass pulpits, nothing in Project 2025 is a surprise. Most of its content is simply the “greatest hits” of those who sense their historic positions of power and control slipping from underneath their feet.

The most time-tested of all these hits is “Beware! People different from us are coming for our children!”

There are legitimate concerns about child exploitation and human trafficking in the porn industry. Pornography does exploit women, but it also exploits men and anyone who suffers from compulsive sexual behavior, a condition the World Health Organization classifies as a mental disorder. Government, clinical and non-profit entities have devoted considerable resources in recent years to address these issues.

But Project 2025’s statement isn’t really about pornography. It is about using the word “family” as code for a particular kind of family and a narrow way of existing in the world as a human. 

It demonizes those who fall outside their accepted norms. It uses children as a human shield for hate.

Attitudes about sexual orientation– a phrase, by the way, Project 2025 seeks to eliminate from public discourse– have shifted dramatically in recent decades.

In 2008, the year the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, the U.S. Census Bureau reported just over half a million same-sex couples in some kind of formal partnership. Around 150,000 of those were labeled “same-sex married partner couples,” with the rest being “same-sex unmarried partner couples.”

By 2021, the total number of same-sex couples in a formal partnership had more than doubled. As you might expect, in 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, the number of married same-sex couples overtook the number of those who were unmarried.

During that period, support for same-sex marriage among U.S. respondents went from a low of 40% in 2008 up to 70% in 2021.

You don’t need to be a social scientist or have off-the-charts emotional intelligence to understand the reason for this shift. The more people are exposed to different types of families, the more they see how unfounded their previous fears had been.

Most of us now know that the greatest threats to children are climate change, social media (something Project 2025 does address), and a crumbling public education system. It isn’t that Billy has two moms or Jane has two dads.

Project 2025 lacks explicit information about its plans regarding same-sex marriage. However, it does laud the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe vs. Wade as a model to emulate. This has led some to fear that Dobbs could be a model for overturning Ogberfell, the case that legalized same-sex marriage.

But, for the most part, those who warned about and utilized the levers of power against the legalization and normalization of gay marriage realize they have lost that battle. Because of this, they have shifted their fearmongering to transgender individuals.

Pastors who walked their congregations through the process of becoming “welcoming and affirming” congregations five years ago fielded very few concerns about the “T” in “LGBTQ+.” Now, it is often the only letter of the rainbow holding some people back. 

And, of course, their concerns are always about “the children.” They may know and have compassion for a trans adult.

But they have heard the drumbeat of words like “irreversible” and “mutilation” associated with transgender kids and it makes them nervous. This is by design.

There is enough historical information available about trans identity to foster understanding and acceptance. Though they don’t owe this to anyone, there are enough individuals, including children, who are willing to tell their stories to people who will listen. 

And there are plenty of peer-reviewed clinical and medical studies to explain all the ins and outs associated with transgender care. These include what legally can and can’t occur with children.

Those who are fearful of losing their narrative on this, the way they lost the gay marriage narrative, understand this. The only tools they have to fight this are misinformation and fear, couched in a “concern for children.”

History tells us that they won’t stop there. If given the chance, they will roll back other protections for LGBTQ+ individuals. Project 2025 already targets women’s reproductive rights, but it would be foolish to assume they don’t have their eyes on other rights as well.

The real question Project 2025 raises is this: Will we live in a world of empathy and understanding that expands the table to those who have been left out? Or, will we live in a world of fear and misinformation, one that demonizes those who are demanding their seat in a democracy?

Choose wisely.