North Carolina citizens are facing another consequence resulting from the state’s recently passed anti-LGBT law—no porn. At least not from XHamster.com.
The porn website is reportedly blocking visitors to its site who have North Carolina IP addresses. XHamster.com joins the likes of Bruce Springsteen, who has cancelled a show in the state to protest House Bill 2. The bill, passed on March 23, prevents local governments from passing any laws to protect LGBT citizens from discrimination, precluding a Charlotte ordinance that would have allowed people to use public bathrooms based on the gender they identify with rather than the one on their birth certificate. Similar laws have also been passed in Indiana and Mississippi.
“I think that porn has the power to do what Bruce Springsteen can’t,” Mike Kulich, a spokesperson for the company, told the Huffington Post. When North Carolinians visit the site now, they will only be welcomed with a blank page, which Kulich said will soon be replaced with a petition calling for HB2 to be repealed.
Kulich added that, according to the site’s statistics, North Carolina’s taste in porn is more open minded than the passing of the HB2 law would suggest—in March, viewers from the state searched the term “Gay” 319,907 times and “Transsexual” about 400,000 times.