A Project 2025 contributor appears to be addressing reports of an alleged past in gay porn

A prominent school privatization activist who was praised by former President Donald Trump and contributed to Project 2025 has spoken out for the first time after videos surfaced earlier this month that appeared to show his involvement in gay pornography videos.

“As a parent rights and school choice activist, my passion is personal,” says Corey DeAngelis wrote on Xformerly Twitter, on Monday morning. “I was a victim of bad decisions and bad influences. I have used this experience as the fuel that drives me to protect young people from being put in the same position I was in and to help parents protect their children.”

Earlier this month, a blog called Str8 Up Gay Porn, which publishes gay porn reviews and articles about the adult entertainment industry, reported for the first time that a person resembling DeAngelis appeared in several gay adult films.

The performer, who goes by the name “Seth Rose,” appears in at least three gay adult films on the 2014 pornography website GayHoopla. In the videos, “Rose” appears masturbating alone and with other men.

DeAngelis’ post on Monday appears to acknowledge his appearance in these films and acknowledge that he was a “victim of bad decisions.” His post went out to his 163,000 followers on X and received praise from conservative writers like Richard Hanania And Chris Rufowho is widely credited with inventing the critical race theory panic.

DeAngelis was a fierce critic of what he viewed as “pornographic” content in school literature, often referring to classroom materials that included discussion of LGBTQ+ people and their experiences.

The same day Str8 Up Gay Porn published his blog, DeAngelis published on Girls Sports.”

DeAngelis did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment, but posted a screenshot of this reporter’s query to X and said the article was “a hit against me because I don’t want porn in schools.”

The self-described “school choice evangelist” is also listed as a Project 2025 contributor on behalf of the American Federation for Children. Project 2025 is a policy roadmap for a second Trump presidency written by the Heritage Foundation and a network of conservative organizations.

Sarah Kate Ellis, president of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD, said The Advocate that DeAngelis’ role as a contributor to Project 2025 “is further evidence that he is willing to sell student safety to anti-LGBTQ extremists.”

In the introduction, the authors of Project 2025 equate “transgender ideology” with “pornography” and call for it to be “banned.” The 900-page document boasts numerous policies promoting school privatization programs while pushing to prevent public school officials from doing anything – such as using a name or a different pronoun – to support transgender and gender non-conforming students.

The idea that the existence of transgender people equals pornography is now a common refrain, dating back to the 1970s when anti-gay advocate Anita Bryant launched her “Save the Children” campaign baselessly equated Gays and lesbians with snow groomers and people who abuse children.

DeAngelis repeated these claims as reasons why parents should withdraw their children from public schools and opt for taxpayer-funded school privatization. In his book “The Parent Revolution: Saving Your Children from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools.” Trump promoted On Truth Social, DeAngelis warns that many popular books in public schools “push a gender ideology” that veers into “pornographic territory.”

He has made similar talking points in Fox News segments and criticized LGBTQ+ inclusive policies in schools, particularly those that allow trans girls to use girls’ locker rooms and play on girls’ sports teams.

DeAngelis currently runs the nonprofit Education Freedom Institute, which promotes “school choice,” a policy advocated by some conservatives that uses taxpayer money to subsidize private schools.

He was a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, another conservative education nonprofit founded by Trump-appointed former Education Secretary Betsy Devos.

But since the videos surfaced two weeks ago, Rebekah Bydlak, a spokeswoman for the American Federation for Children, told NBC News that DeAngelis has been placed on leave “while we continue to investigate this matter.”

Bydlak did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

Last year, DeAngelis supported the Chino, California, school district’s policies “Out” transgender students to their parentsand another in Temecula, California, to ban books featuring LGBTQ+ people.

“I cannot believe that we have come to a point in America where authoritarians in power are fighting so hard to keep sexual secrets about children from their own parents,” said DeAngelis, who sits on the board of the Liberty Justice Center. a conservative attorney advocacy group said after California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued Chino County over its parent notification policy.