XHamster.com Stands Up Against North Carolina’s Anti-LGBT Law

via Flickr user (cc) ReidJ14

The fight to repeal North Carolina’s recently-passed anti-LBGT laws has found unlikely support from a wildly popular porn site. XHamster.com, which ranks among the most popular streaming adult websites in the world, has just announced it has gone dark in North Carolina until the state repeals HB2 aka the “Public Facilities & Security Act.” Until the state’s legislators get on the right side of history, all users with a North Carolina IP address will only see a black screen.

“We have spent the last 50 years fighting for equality for everyone and these laws are discriminatory which XHamster.com does not tolerate,” XHamster spokesman, Mike Kulich, said to The Huffington Post. “Judging by the stats of what you North Carolinians watch, we feel this punishment is a severe one. We will not standby and pump revenue into a system that promotes this type of garbage. We respect all sexualities and embrace them.”

According to XHamster.com’s analytics, North Carolinians are much more open-minded than their new laws would suggest. “Back in March, we had 400,000 hits for the term ‘Transsexual’ from North Carolina alone,” Kulich said. “People from that state searched ‘Gay’ 319,907 times.” North Carolina’s HB2 bill restricts people from using bathrooms that do not match the biological sex stated on their birth certificates. It also says that all local laws regarding LGBT nondiscrimination practices are superseded by the state’s new discriminatory laws.

XHamster joins a growing movement of companies and artists that have boycotted North Carolina after the passing of HB2 on March 24th of this year. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band cancelled a tour stop in Greensboro, North Carolina last Sunday in protest of the bill. Big companies are getting in on the act as well. PayPal recently reversed its decision to build a $3.6 million global operations center in the state and Google, Facebook, American Airlines, and Bank of America have also released statements opposing the law.