National
OnlyFans reverses decision to ban sexually explicit content
LGBTQ performers part of backlash against restricting porn
The London-based website known as OnlyFans, which has at least 130 million users and more than 2 million people who create and sell content on the site, including sexually explicit performances, announced on Wednesday that it has reversed a decision made less than two weeks earlier to ban sexually explicit content on its site beginning in October.
The reversal came after a groundswell of opposition to the proposed ban surfaced from its performers and customers, many of whom are members of the LGBTQ community who, like their straight counterparts, used the site to generate income over the past year and a half during the COVID pandemic.
OnlyFans stated at the time it announced on Aug. 19 its earlier plan to ban sexually explicit content that it did so in response to concerns raised by banks and credit card companies that in recent years have threatened to stop processing payments to adult websites.
“Thank you to everyone for making your voices heard,” OnlyFans said in a statement released on Wednesday, Aug. 25.
“We have secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community and have suspended the planned October 1 policy change,” the statement says. “OnlyFans stands for inclusion, and we will continue to provide a home for all creators.”
When asked by CNN whether OnlyFans’ use of the word “suspension” to halt its planned ban on sexually explicit content means that it could reinstate the ban at a later date if credit card companies continue to raise objections, OnlyFans replied by stating, “The proposed October 1, 2021, changes are no longer required due to banking partners’ assurance that OnlyFans can support all genres of creators.”
An official with the Free Speech Coalition, which serves as an adult industry trade association, told the Washington Blade a policy by OnlyFans to ban sexually explicit content from its site would have an especially harsh impact on the most vulnerable groups, including LGBTQ people, that rely on the site and other similar sites to earn a living through sex work.
Mike Stabile, the Los Angeles-based Free Speech Coalition’s director of public affairs, said sites like OnlyFans have enabled sex workers to generate a substantial income by performing from their homes rather than working on the streets, in providing content to “fans” or customers who pay them directly to view their performances.
“These platforms have enabled them not just to survive but build equity and thrive,” Stabile said.
In an Aug. 19 statement, Free Speech Coalition said OnlyFans and other sites providing adult content have been targeted over the past two years by conservative religious groups and churches that the coalition says have falsely attempted to link adult websites to sex trafficking of children.
Stabile told the Blade that adult sites have longstanding safeguards in place that prevent sex traffickers from placing content on their sites. He said during the past two years in which the controversial federal law passed by Congress to hold adult sites liable for sex trafficking, known as SESTA-FOSTA, has been in effect, the law has rarely been used to prosecute sex traffickers and has yet to be used to shut down any of the sites used by consenting adults.
He noted that prior to the time SESTA-FOSTA took effect, prosecutors used existing statutes to shut down Backpage, an adult site widely used by sex workers to interact with customers on grounds that the site allegedly allowed sex traffickers to use the site.
Around that same time, Craigslist on its own removed all “personal” classified ads from its site, saying it could not risk being held liable for allegations of sex traffickers using its personal ads under the SESTA-FOSTA law, even though Craigslist prohibited its site from being used for sex trafficking or any nonconsensual practices.
While no credible evidence has emerged that adult sites are in any way allowing sex traffickers to use those sites, Free Speech Coalition has said conservative religious groups that oppose all sex work and want to ban all pornography on the Internet have begun to put pressure on banks and credit card companies to stop servicing the adult sites.
Stabile points out that studies have shown that far more sex traffickers have succeeded in slipping through safeguards to prevent them from posting on sites with Facebook and Twitter than with the adult sites. No online platforms can be 100 percent effective in preventing a few traffickers from getting on their sites, Stabile said, but the anti-trafficking groups hold the adult sites to a greater degree of blame than mainline sites like Facebook.
The adult sites have stated repeatedly they will cooperate with law enforcement officials to identity and help prosecute sex traffickers who target underage people.
“Banks and credit card companies are risk-averse institutions, easily scared by potential bad publicity,” Free Speech Coalition says in its Aug. 19 statement. “Religious groups know this and have made no secret of targeting them in their quest to eliminate sex workers altogether,” the statement says.
“In doing so, companies like Mastercard have become enablers of these anti-porn, anti-LGBTQ, misogynist groups,” the statement continues. “Companies like Mastercard are now accomplices in the disenfranchisement of millions of sex workers, complicit in pushing workers away from independence into potentially more dangerous and exploitative conditions.”
A Mastercard spokesperson told CNN earlier this week that it was not involved in OnlyFans’ initial decision to ban or restrict sexually explicit content from its site.
“It’s a decision they came to themselves,” spokesperson Seth Eisen told CNN.
But Free Speech Coalition and other adult industry advocates point to a Mastercard policy announced in April that requires adult sites to put in place strict safeguards to prevent “illegal content” from being uploaded on their sites. Stabile noted that the new policy comes shortly after Mastercard and other credit card companies stopped servicing Pornhub, the largest of the adult sites after allegations surfaced that sex traffickers were using that site.
These developments have had a chilling effect on the adult sites and sex workers who rely on them to support themselves financially, adult industry advocates have said.
Cyndee Clay, executive director of the D.C. sex worker advocacy group HIPS, which provides support for local gay and trans sex workers, said the OnlyFans decision to ban sexually explicit content from its site, if left in place, would have an especially harmful impact on D.C. sex workers.
“The OnlyFans announcement comes as yet another devastating blow to sex workers’ ability to work and care for themselves and their families in an industry already full of stress and hardship during the pandemic,” Clay told the Blade before OnlyFans reversed its decision.
“Under the threat of SESTA/FOSTA and when platforms like Backpage went down, HIPS saw a 100 percent increase in street-based sex work, because folks turned back to the streets to survive when safer, more autonomous online options were taken away,” Clay said. “We haven’t outlawed all house cleaning services because of a few documented instances of forced domestic trafficking,” she said.
Clay, like officials with the Free Speech Coalition, pointed out that OnlyFans, which launched its site in 2016, became a multimillion-dollar operation through the income it generated by sex workers and their online customers who used the site far more than any other “fans” or content creators.
When it announced its decision to ban or restrict sexually explicit content from its site, OnlyFans said the decision was based in part on concerns raised by banks and credit card companies as well as on its efforts to secure funding from investors who are reluctant to be associated with companies that provide sexually explicit material.
“In order to ensure long-term sustainability of the platform, we must evolve our content guidelines,” OnlyFans said in a statement last week.
“Sites like OnlyFans provided a safer online option for many sex workers during the pandemic,” said HIPS director Clay before OnlyFans reversed its earlier decision. “OnlyFans was a harm reduction alternative for sex workers who were trying to be safe by avoiding personal contact, working in clubs, or working the streets,” she said. “It’s immoral that we are now punishing sex workers for these efforts by taking away this platform.”
Matt Lownik, an OnlyFans performer who lives in London, contacted the Blade to express his concern about the OnlyFans initial decision to ban sexually explicit content before the company reversed the policy change.
Lownik said he currently has 144,000 followers on OnlyFans, one of its rival sites called JustForFans, and on a Twitter account.
“There are performers all across the world who use OnlyFans, and a huge number across the U.S.,” he said. “I’ve met several performers who live in or near D.C., but I would say the majority that I’ve met are from New York or Los Angeles,” he told the Blade.
He said the fees that performers charge for their subscribers vary widely, but most charge approximately $10 to $15 per month, with many performers having dozens or hundreds of subscribers. He said OnlyFans takes a cut of 20 percent of its performers’ earnings.
U.S. Supreme Court
Activists rally for Andry Hernández Romero in front of Supreme Court
Gay asylum seeker ‘forcibly deported’ to El Salvador, described as political prisoner
More than 200 people gathered in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday and demanded the Trump-Vance administration return to the U.S. a gay Venezuelan asylum seeker who it “forcibly disappeared” to El Salvador.
Lindsay Toczylowski, president of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a Los Angeles-based organization that represents Andry Hernández Romero, is among those who spoke alongside U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) and Human Rights Campaign Campaigns and Communications Vice President Jonathan Lovitz. Sarah Longwell of the Bulwark, Pod Save America’s Jon Lovett, and Tim Miller are among those who also participated in the rally.
“Andry is a son, a brother. He’s an actor, a makeup artist,” said Toczylowski. “He is a gay man who fled Venezuela because it was not safe for him to live there as his authentic self.”
(Video by Michael K. Lavers)
The White House on Feb. 20 designated Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, as an “international terrorist organization.”
President Donald Trump on March 15 invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which the Associated Press notes allows the U.S. to deport “noncitizens without any legal recourse.” The Trump-Vance administration subsequently “forcibly removed” Hernández and hundreds of other Venezuelans to El Salvador.
Toczylowski said she believes Hernández remains at El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison known by the Spanish acronym CECOT. Toczylowski also disputed claims that Hernández is a Tren de Aragua member.
“Andry fled persecution in Venezuela and came to the U.S. to seek protection. He has no criminal history. He is not a member of the Tren de Aragua gang. Yet because of his crown tattoos, we believe at this moment that he sits in a torture prison, a gulag, in El Salvador,” said Toczylowski. “I say we believe because we have not had any proof of life for him since the day he was put on a U.S. government-funded plane and forcibly disappeared to El Salvador.”
“Andry is not alone,” she added.
Takano noted the federal government sent his parents, grandparents, and other Japanese Americans to internment camps during World War II under the Alien Enemies Act. The gay California Democrat also described Hernández as “a political prisoner, denied basic rights under a law that should have stayed in the past.”
“He is not a case number,” said Takano. “He is a person.”
Hernández had been pursuing his asylum case while at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego.
A hearing had been scheduled to take place on May 30, but an immigration judge the day before dismissed his case. Immigrant Defenders Law Center has said it will appeal the decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which the Justice Department oversees.
“We will not stop fighting for Andry, and I know neither will you,” said Toczylowski.
Friday’s rally took place hours after Attorney General Pam Bondi said Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who the Trump-Vance administration wrongfully deported to El Salvador, had returned to the U.S. Abrego will face federal human trafficking charges in Tennessee.
National
A husband’s story: Michael Carroll reflects on life with Edmund White
Iconic author died this week; ‘no sunnier human in the world’
Unlike most gay men of my generation, I’ve only been to Fire Island twice. Even so, the memory of my first visit has never left me. The scenery was lovely, and the boys were sublime — but what stood out wasn’t the beach or the parties. It was a quiet afternoon spent sipping gin and tonics in a mid-century modern cottage tucked away from the sand and sun.
Despite Fire Island’s reputation for hedonism, our meeting was more accident than escapade. Michael Carroll — a Facebook friend I’d chatted with but never met — mentioned that he and his husband, Ed, would be there that weekend, too. We agreed to meet for a drink. On a whim, I checked his profile and froze. Ed was author Edmund White.
I packed a signed copy of Carroll’s “Little Reef” and a dog-eared hardback of “A Boy’s Own Story,” its spine nearly broken from rereads. I was excited to meet both men and talk about writing, even briefly.
Yesterday, I woke to the news that Ed had passed away. Ironically, my first thought was of Michael.
This week, tributes to Edmund White are everywhere — rightly celebrating his towering legacy as a novelist, essayist, and cultural icon. I’ve read all of his books, and I could never do justice to the scope of a career that defined and chronicled queer life for more than half a century. I’ll leave that to better-prepared journalists.
But in those many memorials, I’ve noticed something missing. When Michael Carroll is mentioned, it’s usually just a passing reference: “White’s partner of thirty years, twenty-five years his junior.” And yet, in the brief time I spent with this couple on Fire Island, it was clear to me that Michael was more than a footnote — he was Ed’s anchor, editor, companion, and champion. He was the one who knew his husband best.
They met in 1995 after Michael wrote Ed a fan letter to tell him he was coming to Paris. “He’d lost the great love of his life a year before,” Michael told me. “In one way, I filled a space. Understand, I worshiped this man and still do.”
When I asked whether there was a version of Ed only he knew, Michael answered without hesitation: “No sunnier human in the world, obvious to us and to people who’ve only just or never met him. No dark side. Psychology had helped erase that, I think, or buffed it smooth.”
Despite the age difference and divergent career arcs, their relationship was intellectually and emotionally symbiotic. “He made me want to be elegant and brainy; I didn’t quite reach that, so it led me to a slightly pastel minimalism,” Michael said. “He made me question my received ideas. He set me free to have sex with whoever I wanted. He vouchsafed my moods when they didn’t wobble off axis. Ultimately, I encouraged him to write more minimalistically, keep up the emotional complexity, and sleep with anyone he wanted to — partly because I wanted to do that too.”
Fully open, it was a committed relationship that defied conventional categories. Ed once described it as “probably like an 18th-century marriage in France.” Michael elaborated: “It means marriage with strong emotion — or at least a tolerance for one another — but no sex; sex with others. I think.”
That freedom, though, was always anchored in deep devotion and care — and a mutual understanding that went far beyond art, philosophy, or sex. “He believed in freedom and desire,” Michael said, “and the two’s relationship.”
When I asked what all the essays and articles hadn’t yet captured, Michael paused. “Maybe that his writing was tightly knotted, but that his true personality was vulnerable, and that he had the defense mechanisms of cheer and optimism to conceal that vulnerability. But it was in his eyes.”
The moment that captured who Ed was to him came at the end. “When he was dying, his second-to-last sentence (garbled then repeated) was, ‘Don’t forget to pay Merci,’ the cleaning lady coming the next day. We had had a rough day, and I was popping off like a coach or dad about getting angry at his weakness and pushing through it. He took it almost like a pack mule.”
Edmund White’s work shaped generations — it gave us language for desire, shame, wit, and liberation. But what lingers just as powerfully is the extraordinary life Ed lived with a man who saw him not only as a literary giant but as a real person: sunny, complex, vulnerable, generous.
In the end, Ed’s final words to his husband weren’t about his books or his legacy. They were about care, decency, and love. “You’re good,” he told Michael—a benediction, a farewell, maybe even a thank-you.
And now, as the world celebrates the prolific writer and cultural icon Edmund White, it feels just as important to remember the man and the person who knew him best. Not just the story but the characters who stayed to see it through to the end.
District of Columbia
In town for WorldPride? Take a D.C. LGBTQ walking tour
Scenes of protest, celebration, and mourning
As Washington welcomes the world for WorldPride, it’s essential to honor the city’s deep-rooted LGBTQ history—an integral part of the broader story of the nation’s capital. The following locations have served as cornerstones of queer life and activism in D.C., shaping both local and national movements for LGBTQ rights. So take a walk around “the gayest city in America” and check out these sites.
DUPONT CIRCLE AREA
Dupont Circle
Central hub of LGBTQ life since the early 20th century, hosting Pride parades, Dyke Marches, and cruising culture. A long-standing site of protests and celebrations.
Washington Hilton – 1919 Connecticut Ave NW
Hosted D.C.’s first major hotel drag event in 1968 and the iconic Miss Adams Morgan Pageant. Protested in 1978 during Anita Bryant’s appearance.
Lesbian Avengers – 1426 21st St NW
Formed in 1992, the group empowered lesbians through bold direct actions. They met in Dupont Circle and launched the city’s first Dyke March.
Lambda Rising Bookstore (former) – 1724 20th Street NW
D.C.’s first LGBTQ bookstore and the birthplace of the city’s inaugural Pride celebration in 1975.
Women In The Life (former office) – 1623 Connecticut Ave NW
Founded in 1993 by Sheila Alexander-Reid as a safe space and support network for lesbians of color.
17th Street NW Corridor – Between P & R Streets NW
Core of the LGBTQ business district, home to the annual High Heel Race in October and the June Block Party celebrating the origins of D.C. Pride.
CAPITOL HILL / SOUTHEAST
Tracks (former) – 80 M St SE
Once D.C.’s largest gay club, famous for inclusive parties, RuPaul shows, and foam nights from 1984 to 2000.
Ziegfeld’s / The Other Side – 1345 Half Street SE
Legendary drag venue since 1978, hosting famed performers like Ella Fitzgerald.
Club 55 / Waaay Off Broadway – 55 K Street SE
Converted theater central to D.C.’s early drag and Academy pageant scenes.
Congressional Cemetery – 1801 E Street SE
Resting place of LGBTQ figures like Sgt. Leonard Matlovich and Peter Doyle. Offers queer history tours.
Mr. Henry’s – 601 Pennsylvania Ave SE
LGBTQ-friendly bar since 1966 and the launching stage for Roberta Flack’s career.
The Furies Collective House – 219 11th Street SE
Home to a 1970s lesbian feminist collective that published “The Furies.” Members included Rita Mae Brown.
ARCHIVES / PENN QUARTER
Archives Metro & Center Market Site – 7th St & Pennsylvania Ave NW
Where Walt Whitman met Peter Doyle in 1865, commemorated by a sculpture linking Whitman and poet Fernando Pessoa.
COLUMBIA HEIGHTS / PETWORTH
Palm Ballroom (former) – 4211 9th Street NW
Mid-20th century venue for Black drag balls and LGBTQ events during segregation.
NATIONAL MALL AREA
National Mall / Washington Monument Grounds
Historic site of LGBTQ activism and remembrance, including the 1987 display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt and a mass same-sex wedding. Hosted major civil rights marches in 1979, 1987, and 1993.
NORTHWEST DC
Dr. Franklin E. Kameny House – 5020 Cathedral Ave NW
Home of gay rights pioneer Frank Kameny and the Mattachine Society of Washington; now a national landmark.
LAFAYETTE SQUARE / WHITE HOUSE
Lafayette Park – Pennsylvania Ave & 16th St NW
Historic gay cruising area and epicenter of government surveillance during the Lavender Scare.
Data from: SSecret City by James Kirchick, The Deviant’s War by Frank Kameny, Brett Beemyn, The Rainbow History Project, NPS Archives, Washington Blade Archives.
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