As I mentioned in Fix Your Hearts or Die, despite his protests while running for office that he knew nothing of Project 2025, the felonious con man and human shitstain who lied his way into the Oval Office wasted no time in appointing two of its principal architects to key roles in his administration. Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought.

With tutelage from Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian regime, the current administration is attempting the same sort of self-coup that destroyed democracy in Hungary. As fascists often cement their power by both silencing and erasing their opponents, the queer community must take seriously the magnitude of the threat we face.

In 1933, the Nazi Party destroyed the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science), burning its papers and books in the street. Founded in 1919, the non-profit foundation was the world’s first sexology research center. As noted in Wikipedia, “the institute pioneered research and treatment for various matters regarding gender and sexuality, including gay, transgender, and intersex topics.”

On January 20th, as one of its first acts, the administration issued an executive order on “gender ideology,” which states in part:

It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.

As a consequence of this order, the National Parks Service has removed any references to trans people from its website for the National Monument commemorating the Stonewall Uprising—the 1969 riot at the legendary bar that gave birth to the gay rights movement. It is positively Orwellian that Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, trans activists who were central to the fight for LGBQT+ rights, are now being erased from the very monument to their work.

Ironically, the monument’s website observes: “Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was illegal,” this administration’s erasure will not stop with the trans community, though. It fully intends to push all gay Americans back into the closet. In Utah, a proposed bill would ban the LGBQT+ flag from all schools or on any government building or property. While Nazi and Confederate flags would be allowed as “historic version(s) of a flag…temporarily displayed for educational purposes,” LGBQT+ history and culture are simply erased.

This brings us to pornography and Project 2025—the architects of which are now running the United States government. The 2025 playbook could not have been any more transparent about its goals regarding pornography:

”Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”

As it has with abortion, while the ruling fascist party is waiting for the federal government to catch up, it is using the state governments in its control to pass increasingly restrictive laws governing the behavior of their citizens. Kansas recently instituted a law requiring age verification to access adult sites. The law argues that businesses in Kansas are forbidden from promoting materials deemed harmful to minors. And what does Kansas consider harmful to minors?

Acts of masturbation, homosexuality, sexual intercourse or physical contact with a person’s clothed or unclothed genitals or pubic area or buttocks or with a human female’s breast.

Again, consider the goal of this administration, to make pornography illegal—with a specific threat to telecommunications and technology firms that distribute it. Beta broligarch Mark Zuckerberg is jealous of how often supreme edge lord Elon Musk gets to gargle the President’s fetid scrotum. In his eagerness to ascend to the rank of number one fluffer, it’s not hard to envision the moment when any content that depicts ordinary gay life is prohibited from Instagram and Facebook. Consider too the anti-gay legislation DeSantis pushed through in Florida—and how its opposition to that bill cost Disney its independent governance in Florida.

In On Tyranny, Timothy Synder cautions, “Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.” As such, it’s particularly discouraging to see, that in pursuit of shareholder profits, and not wanting to enrage our burgeoning autocratic regime, that even Apple and Google are working to placate the administration and now perpetrate the farce that the Gulf of Mexico, referred to as such since 1550, will henceforth be known as the Gulf of America. As Musk and Zuckerberg are exponentially more craven than either Tim Cook or Sundar Pichai, expect the acquiescence from Meta and X significantly worse.

And for fuck sake, get off of X already. Bluesky is a much better alternative. And remember…

throb. will always stand up against racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and bigotry in all forms. We reject categorically the forces of hate that wish to marginalize and erase our communities.

Know hope.