College Cancels Conner Habib’s Sex-Education Lecture Because He’s a Porn Star

This weekend, gay porn star Conner Habib came to William Way Community Center to lead “Beyond Our Bodies,” a sex-education workshop hosted by GALAEI. The afternoon included a thoughtful presentation about how to take sexual health beyond the bedroom and incorporate it into our daily lives. Habib, an Allentown native, was recently invited by a student group to lead a similar discussion at Corning Community College in upstate New York, but when high-ups got wind of his background in the adult-film industry, they told him to stay away.

An article on Queerty explains that Equal, the student group that invited Habib in the first place, was told by school president Katherine Douglas that the invitation was rescinded because she didn’t want gay rights and porn rights to be intertwined on her campus. Equal president Brandon Griewank was then encouraged to turned a blind eye to the situation, and asked not to go to the press. He didn’t listen.

In a column on BuzzFeed, Habib says, “I was informed that administrators contacted a local hotel and local businesses to make sure I wouldn’t be coming to town … that the president wanted to schedule her own talk to tell students about why she canceled my appearance, and that if I were to appear in the town of Corning, students were not to attend my lecture.”

Their actions didn’t do much good. Habib ended up leading a free discussion last week at a library near the campus. The talk explored the intersection of gay rights and porn rights — something that Habib explains can go hand in hand. In the above-mentioned column, he closes with, “To be an ally to gay men, and by extension the LGBT movement, doesn’t only mean being comfortable with gay men’s sexual orientation, it also means being comfortable with their orientation to sex. This is why, when someone claims to be an ally of gay men, [their acceptance of] pornography exposes … where they really stand.”

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