A Texas crusader about the “woke” left and a contributor to Project 2025 turns out to be a former gay porn star.
Corey DeAngelis is listed as a “contributor” to Project 2025 in his capacity as a senior fellow for the American Federation for Children, a conservative advocacy group for private and charter schools founded by Betsy DeVos. He also serves as an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
And now, it has been revealed, he also appears to have been known as “Seth Rose” as a gay porn star whose videos are still available online.
As a speaker and author, he’s among the rightwing crowd calling for the U.S. Department of Education to be abolished, opposes LGBTQ rights and has built a reputation for opposing “left-wing indoctrination” in “government schools.” His new book, The Parent Revolution, claims to teach parents how to “rescue” their children from “the radicals ruining our schools.”
DeAngelis (left) with Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt and Oklahom State Superintendent Ryan Walters. (Source: Twitter/X)
His porn star life a decade ago with the adult site GayHoopla came to public notice in July but more recently was highlighted by “Current Revolt,” a Substack blogger. The connection was reported by multiple national media outlets over the weekend and DeAngelis has not issued a denial or explanation.
American Federation for Children has removed him from its website and issued this statement: “We have placed the employee on leave as we investigate this matter further.”
A Yahoo News columnist described DeAngelis as being known for “aggressive online rhetoric aimed at school districts, teachers unions and particularly American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten” and said he had been “an avid culture warrior and perhaps the most visible face of a brand of school choice that paints traditional districts as failing institutions that are forcing left-wing ideas on students.
It was not his opponents on the left who outed him, however, but fellow supporters on the right.
The Advocate, a gay-friendly publication, reported on the story and said, “DeAngelis did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and his Stanford University email reply indicated that he was out of the office and on paternity leave.”
While DeAngelis has one kind of reckoning to do with his conservative colleagues, those on the left had a different reaction.
“As with so many other instances of conservative queer hypocrisy, DeAngelis shouldn’t be ashamed of allegedly having done gay porn in the past; rather, he should be ashamed of making money from gay porn, then helping enact political agendas like Project 2025, which also contains a plan to ban pornography as a whole,” wrote Samantha Riedel for Them online news.
GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis told The Advocate: “DeAngelis’ fraud on school districts across the country should be seen for what it is: an anti-LGBTQ attack, underwritten by the most extreme anti-LGBTQ groups. DeAngelis and Heritage have no business anywhere near America’s schools, students and families.”
DeAngelis’ Cato bio describes him as earning a Ph.D. in education policy from the University of Arkansas and bachelors and master’s degrees in economics from the University of Texas at San Antonio. He has authored or coauthored 40 journal articles, book chapters and reports on education policy and he is the coeditor of School Choice Myths: Setting the Record Straight on Education Freedom.