Is gay porn the greatest weapon against the pathologically homophobic Westboro Baptist Church?
That’s the first thing Reddit user VinCenzo831 thought after noticing .xxx domains had gone on sale yesterday. He quickly dropped $107 for the rights to the blank, virgin territory of WestboroBaptistChurch.xxx. Then he turned to liberal-leaning, social news site Reddit to ask for advice.
“Help me sell this domain name to a porn website,” he pleaded on the site’s r/atheism community. “Since they hate gays so much it would be even better for this to be a gay porn website.”
Imagine a raging homophobe’s surprise when explicit homosexual erotica pops up right beneath a Google search for the church’s name. However, potential legal issues aside (like trademark laws), many redditors pointed out that pornographic shock is a short-term weapon—at best.
“Maybe rather than porn,” redditor FockerCRNA suggested, “it would be even better it it was a LGBT positive website that educated people about civil rights and discouraged homophobia.”
That idea shot to the top of the thread, gathering a few thousand upvotes along the way. As redditors pointed out, the ICM Registry actually requires .xxx domains to host adult content. So, as redditor MelissaH1979 suggested, why not combine the best of both worlds: “educate about LGBT issues, naked.”
Reddit already hosts a community, r/gonewild, where hundreds of redditors bare it all just for fun every day. It’s not surprising then that this education-in-the-nude idea took off as well.
“If someone designs a website, I would definitely be willing to do naked PSA’s about homosexuality being A-OK,” redditor Scarfington wrote.
“I’m on board too. I’ve always wanted to be a porn star for a good cause!” added rawren.
VinCenzo831has been offline for about 10 hours and hasn’t responded to a request for an interview. So for now, the WestboroBaptistChurch.xxx domain remains in limbo.
If it succeeds, however, nudity may just become the go-to solution for all the world’s problems.
