Penn State professor makes video telling students to 'watch gay porn' private after backlash
In a recent course, a Penn State professor told straight students to 'watch gay and lesbian porn' to discover their bisexuality.
The whole video lecture was taken down after reports emerged of the incident.
After Campus Reform’s report on January 9 about Penn State University (PSU) professor Sam Richards telling his students that “we’re all, very much... bisexual” and to “watch gay and lesbian porn” to prove it, the video was made private.
Backlash on social media and in news reports added to the pressure on PSU and Richards. When searching for the video, the link now takes you to a page where the video has been made private.
[RELATED: Penn State professor tells straight students to watch gay porn to discover bisexuality]
On Twitter, several users reacted to the story by replying to unrelated posts on the Penn State Twitter page. One user who previously attended the school, Kylie Thomas, said, “The fact that Sam Richards is encouraging @penn_state students to watch gay porn doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. And this is a big reason why I elected to take Soc119 with a different professor.”
The fact that Sam Richards is encouraging @penn_state students to watch gay porn doesn’t surprise me in the slightest
And this is a big reason why I elected to take Soc119 with a different professor — We read Hillbilly Elegy instead of “Trans Issues, TERFS, and The Binary”— Kylie Thomas (@kylie_thomas) January 15, 2023
Thomas told Campus Reform that “[r]emoving the videos from Youtube shows that Sam Richards knew what he was saying to Penn State students was highly inappropriate. Sam Richards’ ego knows no bounds.”
Richard’s rate my professor has been inundated with level 1 quality ratings since the reports, with comments such as “Creeper,” “He asks us to tweet about him which is weird,” and “this person is a freak” being left in reviews.
Members of PSU’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter spoke with Campus Reform about the events.
Student Emmanuel Lepiz told Campus Reform that “[i]t was a shock on the [College Republicans] and YAF group chats,” adding that “[i]f he recommended to gay students to watch straight porn to see if they’re straight there would be an uproar.”
Jacob Schlosser, another member of the chapter, expressed to Campus Reform that “[a]s a conservative Christian, I found [Richards’ comments] disgusting. The fact that a professor would recommend anyone watching porn is indefensible, especially considering all the literature that has been published on why it is harmful.”
When originally speaking to Campus Reform, Richards doubled down on his remarks, saying, “I have friends/acquaintances who’ve spent a long time in prison and they have homosexual sex. They’re ‘straight’ until they need or want intimacy and then they have homosexual sex.”
“None of this is a political statement or idea pushing for some radical gender agenda. It’s just thinking sociologically and thinking outside the box,” he concluded.
Richards and PSU have not yet responded to requests for comment by Campus Reform. This article will be updated as circumstances allow.
