NORTH CAROLINA — xHamster, one of the largest free porn sites in the world, has restricted access to users from North Carolina in protest of House Bill 2.
HB2 proposes transgender individuals must use bathrooms of the sex they were assigned at birth. It has generated heated argument since it was signed into law in March.
Among entities opposing the law are PayPal, which withdrew plans to open an operations center in the state, and Bruce Springsteen, who cancelled a concert in Greensboro last weekend.
Now, xHamster is blocking users from the state, urging residents and state politicians to respect all gender identifications.
Alexander D. Hawkins, Chief Marketing Officer at xHamster, released the following statement:
Our goal is to fight for the equality for everyone and we will stand our ground. Everybody has a right to their own sexuality and xHamster is there to love and support people the way they are. We know what it means to be hypocritically labelled (sic) by the society.
Some politicians won’t walk the walk they talk. All the fuss about moral values being destroyed by porn is ridiculous when checking the statistics on the porn consumption state-on-state, including North Carolina, Mississippi and Tennessee.
There are hypocrites who don’t practice what they preach. Respecting others (sic) sexuality may not come easy, but this is something we must all work together to address.
Porn can’t be blamed for everything, as well as the LGBT community. This was the reason behind the access restriction to our website in the state of North Carolina. Naturally, we are not aimed at banning the access to xHamster in North Carolinians for ever (sic).
We blacked out the access to our website because we wanted to draw attention of millions of people to patterns of human rights violations, and we are glad that our voice has been heard across the globe.
When logging onto the site, users in North Carolina are prompted to answer the question: “Do you support the anti-LGBT bill in North Carolina?” according to WPIX’s sister station WGHP.
If the user clicks “YES,” you are blocked from the site and receive the message: “Your access to xHamster is blacked out in the state of North Carolina until further notice.”
Users are still able to access the site if they answer “NO.”
Despite North Carolina’s opposition of HB2, xHamster says videos in the “gay” category garnered 319,907 views this year in North Carolina alone. The company also says the “shemale” category garnered 491,295 views this year in the state.
xHamster also said the searches for “gay” and “shemale” in the state totaled nearly 100,000.
Some North Carolina residents are happy XHamster restricted access in the state.
Others asked that the ban be extended to states like Mississippi.
