Philipp Tanzer (Logan McCree): Leather Title, Gay Porn, and a Highland Campaign

Philipp Tanzer was born on 31 December 1977. He is a German men’s-rights activist. Before he left the camera he worked as Logan McCree in late-2000s gay porn, heavily tattooed, sold as underground energy inside mainstream studio product, including at Raging Stallion Studios. In 2012 he moved to the Scottish Highlands, dropped the star packaging, and ran for office as a social conservative and a men’s-rights campaigner. Leather and BDSM media history still has to file one person: a title sash, a studio contract, and a culture-war candidacy.

A leather sash, then a Raging Stallion contract

His first public credential was a pageant, not a set. At sixteen he was on the phone when his mother was killed in a murder-suicide by her husband. He served in the Bundeswehr as a medic. He went into Germany’s leather scene, won German Mr. Leather in 2004, and reached the semi-finals of International Mr. Leather the same year. Title contests run on protocol, gear, and the walk.

In the mid-2000s he signed an exclusive contract with Raging Stallion Studios and took the name Logan McCree. “Logan” points at Scotland and at Marvel’s Wolverine. “McCree,” as he read the Scottish Gaelic, means “son of the king,” and he attached it to his love of God. He treated the heavy tattoos as spiritual self-expression: a feather for freedom, a Capricorn symbol, a wolf as a guiding spirit, Saint Michael the Archangel, and a symbol tied to the musician Prince.

From a western to a Castro science-fiction film

In 2007 he starred in Ink Storm with other heavily tattooed performers. In 2008 he was opposite Roman Ragazzi in The 4th Floor. Director Ben Leon said it was the best scene he had shot with Roman. McCree was also nominated for Best Solo Sex Scene at the 2009 Grabby Awards, for related work, not for that duo. In the second part of Hotter Than Hell, a threeway with Dak Ramsey and Tober Brandt was nominated at both the Grabbys and the GayVNs.

The western To the Last Man ends in a bloody shootout and includes a simulated rape: the characters played by McCree and Ricky Sinz assault the character played by Scott Tanner. That threeway won Best Threeway at the 2009 Grabbys and Best Threesome at the GayVNs. In The Drifter (2009) he plays a German visitor to Canada who goes into the wilderness on a self-discovery path after learning his boyfriend is having an affair. The film won Best Movie at the Grabbys. Tanzer won Best Actor and Best Screenplay, and shared Best Duo with Vinnie D’Angelo. In March 2009 the GayVN Awards named McCree Performer of the Year.

The 2009 slate moves around. Porn Stars in Love fictionalizes a real sexual history. Rear Deliveries is shot around a warehouse. The Visitor is science fiction. He plays Epoc, an alien researcher who cannot physically interact with his human subjects while he explores San Francisco’s Castro. Soon after release the title sat at the top of the sales chart. Raging Stallion president Chris Ward called him the top porn star in the industry at that moment. Tanzer later won GayVN Best Actor for the role. In 2010 he and Tyler Saint were joint winners of Gay Performer of the Year at the XBIZ Awards. In 2012 he left the adult industry.

The Highlands, and a change of label

In 2012 Tanzer settled in the Highland village of Balnakeil and said he felt at home there. He built his own house and lived without water or electricity during the work, then worked as a hair stylist and a firefighter. In 2018 he opened a gallery. He also DJs as DJ Krieger. He had a relationship with Vinnie D’Angelo. In his thirties he started dating women. Fans called him gay-for-pay. He said he had never identified as gay, and that he had identified as asexual with a preference for men. In an interview he said sex held little emotional interest for him and was mostly a way to let off pressure. In 2021 he identified as heterosexual and started a family with a woman. By November 2024 he had two daughters. The films are still gay hardcore. The leather title did not come off because the politics changed.

Men’s rights, and two lost elections

Child-custody questions pulled him into the men’s-rights movement. He attended the 2018 International Conference on Men’s Issues in London. In October 2019 BBC Radio 4’s Into the Manosphere followed him from Scotland to Chicago for that year’s ICMI. The same trip appears in the April 2020 BBC Three documentary I Am a Men’s Rights Activist. In 2020 he founded Gender Parity UK, which campaigns against what it calls discrimination against men and boys, and he called for more public talk about men’s mental health, suicide, and homelessness. He presents himself as a supporter of gender equality who thinks modern feminism has left egalitarianism.

In April 2021 he ran for the Scottish Parliament as a member of the Scottish Family Party, which describes itself as pro-family, pro-marriage, and pro-life. He stood as a list candidate in the Highlands and Islands. The party received 1,976 votes. He was not elected. The next year he ran for Highland Council and lost again. He describes himself as usually a centrist, pushed into stronger views by a belief that too much liberalism has done damage. On social media he has attacked what he calls “LGBT indoctrination” in schools, and what he sees as too much attention to Black Lives Matter and radical environmental activism. He has praised the party’s stance on a form of sex education which, he claims, focuses too much on pornography and on certain sexualities. The conservative campaign and the Raging Stallion exclusive, including a science-fiction porn title, stay in the same public life.

A religious thread, and what he said after he quit

He did not have a religious upbringing, but as a child he had a spiritual sense of himself and felt he was partly an angel. In a 2010 interview with Boyz he called himself a Christian, and added that most Christians probably would not call him one. The Saint Michael tattoo, the Gaelic etymology he gave the stage name, and a later vote for an anti-abortion party sit on one line. After he left the industry he told the press he held a negative view of pornography and had worked in it because he needed the money. He said he had not made straight porn, but had shared a set a couple of times and saw men being treated harshly by women performers. Talking about gay sets, he described the colleagues as a supportive family. He has said he lost several colleagues to suicide and drug overdoses, and he speaks against porn addiction and against pornography’s effects on children and adults.