The College Fix

Porn performer Ron Jeremy, the man listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for “most appearances in adult films,” addressed students at NYU on Tuesday as part of a debate on the effect of pornography on the sex trafficking industry.

Ron Jeremy, porn star extraordinaire, and Craig Gross, pastor of non-profit Christian website XXXchurch.com that helps people stop watching porn, spoke at the event “Free Porn? Porn Stars vs. Pastors.” The discussion was organized by The Price of Life: NYC, a “city-wide, campus-based, faith-inspired campaign addressing human trafficking in all its forms,” and invited the two men to debate pornography’s impact on society, specifically on human trafficking.

“What we were trying to get at was that there is a link between human trafficking and porn,” POL’s campus coordinator Andrea Mufarreh said. “There are most definitely cases where women are forced into human trafficking and are being forced into the underground porn industry.”

The event drew well over a hundred people, although it’s difficult to say whether most members of the audience showed up for the discussion or to see The Hedgehog IRL (still, there were whispers of “Wait, which one’s the porn star?” when the men walked on stage). Each delivered a 12-minute opening remark, which was followed by a Q&A session. The conversation, however, only briefly addressed issues concerning human trafficking and the porn industry, turning instead into a debate about pornography in general, which is always fun. Here’s a summary of the main points they covered:

On human trafficking in pornography:

Craig Gross: There’s a lot of stuff that I’ve heard of with the Internet that’s not produced by the companies in LA that’s got girls underage that probably deals with potentially trafficked girls. They’re not going to touch it in their industry, but does it exist? Is it online? Yes.

Ron Jeremy: Trafficking is more a prostitution of minors. I don’t know of anyone videotaping, because why would anybody take a chance with breaking the law? People don’t want to just put you in jail. They want to kill you for something like that. They’re not going to video it because they’re going to be tracked down that way. Trafficking is more of a prostitution thing, it’s not a porn thing.