You really have to marvel at how fast we’ve progressed from ‘Bake the cake, bigot’ to ‘Take off your dress, bigot.’

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Mark Hemingway:

Porn star August Ames committed suicide Tuesday. Ames, whose real name was Mercedes Grabowski, was apparently well-known and well-liked in the, ahem, “industry.” She was young, only 23, and married, insofar as marriage means something when you have sex with other people for a living.

Now, the porn world is regularly subject to high-profile suicides, and I’m not going to pretend it’s a normal occupation pursued by people making enlightened choices. In fact, the circumstances that lead women into porn are as sad as they are predictable: “The adult film star also said her mother was bipolar and that she was molested by her grandfather — a claim which she said her father never believed. Ames told Randall that she was put in a group home at age 12 after alleging to her dad that her grandfather had molested her.”

However, her death is stirring up quite a controversy, because in the days leading up to it, Ames was being bullied heavily online, including several specific suggestions that she kill herself. Ames had tweeted that she had backed out of a sex scene because it wasn’t disclosed that the man she was supposed to have sex with had done gay porn. Apparently, the reticence of women to work with “crossovers” is fairly common and long accepted in porn.

This is because reservations about crossovers aren’t typically perceived as homophobia—Ames claimed she was also attracted to women—it’s simply one of managing risk, as it’s pretty undeniable that gay men are more likely to contract HIV and STDs.

Nonetheless, gay and bisexual performers resent this stigma as unfair, as every performer is subject to the same regular sexually transmitted disease tests before they are cleared to do porn. Despite her protests to the contrary, Ames was called homophobic nonstop online for a few days before she eventually hanged herself.

Where Does ‘Public Accommodation’ Stop?

For a while now, the joke has been that political correctness is moving so swiftly that not only will you have to approve of gay sex, it will become mandatory. I don’t mean this as an unfortunately literal bit of gallows humor, but Ames’ death does raise eyebrows because it speaks to a frightening dystopia where any traditional deference to female vulnerability becomes subservient to liberal pieties about sexuality.

The day Ames killed herself, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about a case involving a Colorado cake baker who doesn’t want to make cakes for gay weddings. The baker, quite understandably and credibly, insists there’s a rather large expressive and artistic component to his vocation, so he shouldn’t be forced to endorse any particular message or religious ceremony he disagrees with. The counterargument is that it’s just a cake, and as long as you’re open for business, you have to serve anyone without discrimination.

Well, I’m scratching my head trying to figure out how Ames’s detractors weren’t extending the exact same logic of “public accommodation” to her. After all, she’s open for business, if you want to call it that. Wouldn’t it be discrimination to exclude working with an entire class of people?

Take Off Your Dress, Bigot

Except that last I checked, there’s a word for when a woman is threatened and bullied into sex with someone she feels uncomfortable with, for any reason whatsoever: “Rape.” Again, it’s worth noting that Ames and other performers believably insist that their aversion is simply about health risks, not discrimination. It doesn’t inspire confidence that gay activists have been arguing for some time that HIV infections should be a private matter. California even recently passed a law reducing the criminal charges related to knowingly exposing someone to deadly virus.

Well, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that a mob that would tell Ames to kill herself if she won’t have sex with someone who has sex with other men would also happily pass a law requiring porn stars to be subject to penalties for discriminating in who they sleep with. Certainly, trans activists are already pushing the idea that you’re transphobic if you won’t sleep with transsexuals. You really have to marvel at how fast we’ve progressed from “Bake the cake, bigot” to “Take off your dress, bigot.”

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Workers in the porn industry regularly have what’s called a ‘No List’, which is a list of people of other performers/producers/directors that they refuse to work with for any reason whatsoever. SJWs are basically saying that you are not allowed to have a No List – which basically makes them sex slaves. Nice going…

Whenever I give blood, I have to read a pamphlet and answer a list of questions about my eligibility. Some of the questions ask me if I have had sex with another man since 1980 or used needles for drugs. Should I be offended? Should I do my civic duty and check “YES”, then insist that my blood be used in transfusion? Should I be the “good activist citizen” and insist public safety be jeopardized so my feelings aren’t hurt? After all, what right does a victim of a car accident have to receive clean, disease-free blood if it hurts my feelings? I can strike a blow against the prevention of the spread of disease and help assure someone else’s feelings aren’t hurt!

As usual, it is a crime to hurt a liberal’s feelings but the feelings or well-being of everyone else is immaterial. Expecting a reactionary liberal to act like an adult is simply out of the question.

The dealers of smut like Hugh Hefner and Larry Flint just a tiny minacule number of sellers of the flesh beside X rated movie makers

@Spurwing Plover:

There is no verb in that sentence. What are you trying to say?