By Ava Sinclair.
Each presidential campaign season brings heightened rhetoric. Fear has replaced reason on both sides of the political aisle, as party spokespersons warn of the dystopian hellscape that awaits if voters don’t choose their candidate.
But this time, there is something to truly fear—something that hinges on a Republican victory, which could radically transform our society into a Christian autocracy. The impacts could be ominous, affecting your ability to choose who you love, what books and movies you enjoy, and even your right to control your own body.
The plan that religious conservatives hope to implement at the start of the 2025 presidential term, should a Republican win, is the brainchild of the Heritage Foundation—a right-wing think tank whose sole purpose has been to pull public policy sharply to the right.
We’ve already gotten a taste of what’s in store. The powerful Heritage Foundation has been instrumental in reshaping our courts, placing conservative nominees on the bench in state and federal courts. But their biggest and most impactful success may be the influence they’ve exerted in giving Americans the most conservative Supreme Court in 90 years. With a solid majority of extreme justices, SCOTUS has overturned Roe v. Wade, made it harder to regulate guns, curbed the power of environmental regulators, and hinted that they’d like to go even further.
So where does Project 2025 fit in? The court was just the tip of the iceberg. Should Republicans gain control, the Heritage Foundation plans to work with conservative leadership to reshape the government itself by replacing current civil servants with rigid ideologues. That’s when the real trouble begins.
WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU
We Americans pride ourselves on individual freedom, or at least we used to. Today, we’re too busy staring at our phones to notice the political juggernaut barreling in our direction—or maybe we just assume this plan, like all political plans, will affect other people. If you want to know how Project 2025 will impact your life, here’s a preview.
• Say goodbye to abortion. The 2022 decision returning the issue of abortion to the states had a grave impact. If you want to know what the whole country might look like, consider states like Texas, where abortion is illegal after just six weeks—before many women even know they’re pregnant. Because doctors face criminal penalties for performing the procedure if a fetal heartbeat is detected, women with incomplete miscarriages or pregnancy-related sepsis have died or nearly died waiting for the treatment they need.
Now imagine every state enacting laws like Texas. Project 2025 will effectively outlaw abortions nationwide through the use of an outdated and misinterpreted law known as the Comstock Act, which will criminalize the mailing of equipment, literature, and supplies used for abortion. It will also make obtaining abortion pills illegal. There’s a method to this madness; the Heritage Foundation knows a direct abortion ban would create a firestorm, so they are relying on this backdoor method to achieve the same outcome.
• Your birth control will be affected. Contrary to the propaganda, the “pro-life” movement has nothing to do with saving babies. If conservatives truly cared about kids’ lives, they wouldn’t be so cavalier about school shootings. No, the efforts to drive down the abortion rate are designed to force women to have more children. Women today have more choices, and fewer of us are choosing to have kids. Conservative leaders are hand-wringing over what this means for the wealthy, who need cogs in their industrial and military machines. They need more people to replace retiring workers, and if pregnancy and childbirth limit women’s choices, then that’s just icing on their corporate cake.
To that end, Project 2025 would rescind no-cost coverage for birth control, eliminate free and emergency contraception, and install judges and leaders who will ensure this is just the beginning.
• Criminalizing LGBTQ+. Since the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, at least one conservative Supreme Court justice has expressed interest in revisiting Obergefell v. Hodges, the decision that legalized gay marriage. But that’s just one swing of the wrecking ball we’ll face if a Republican wins the presidential election. Project 2025’s wish list includes erasing all LGBTQ-friendly language in federal workplaces and rolling back or eliminating laws that make it illegal to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community.
It does not matter that society has become more tolerant of the sexuality and gender identity spectrum, or that gay marriage is widely accepted. To the religious right, rolling back the clock is part of their mission to drag society backward.
• Porn Will Be Illegal. What is porn, anyway? It’s whatever your local right-wing preacher says it is, which means you’ll have to give it up. First Amendment be damned—under Project 2025 guidelines, pornography will be classified as sexually deviant and exploitative, making the creation, distribution, and consumption of porn illegal. This won’t just impact an industry that is increasingly popular with women; it may also extend to other media these new Puritans choose to target. Do you enjoy erotic romance books? You may open your Kindle one day to find all those books have vanished because someone else has decided what you can read.
DO YOUR RESEARCH
Challenge a conservative on some propaganda, and they’ll often tell you the same thing: “Do your research.” In the case of Project 2025, you can go directly to the source. The Heritage Foundation has become so emboldened by their victories that they’re not even trying to hide their chilling agenda. You can visit the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 website, where you’ll be greeted by these words: “It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next conservative administration.”
“The grip of the radical Left” they’re talking about? That’s you, simply having basic rights. The Heritage Foundation doesn’t like it, and they want to take those rights away.
Educate yourself. Learn what this means for you. Then take action to stop it. Fearmongering is never good, but in this case, we have a real reason to be afraid.
Next: The Roots of Project 2025
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the entire staff at Ethical.Porn.
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