Meet J.D. Vance, Trump’s Anti-LGBTQ Running Mate
The U.S. Senator from Ohio and self-described populist is nearly indistinguishable from former Vice President Mike Pence on LGBTQ issues.
Former President Donald Trump has tapped U.S. Senator J.D. Vance as his vice presidential running mate.
A self-acclaimed populist best known for espousing natalist domestic policies, the Ohio Republican echoes his party’s lurch toward right-wing populism and a more nationalist, isolationist approach to foreign policy.
On social issues, Vance is nearly indistinguishable from Mike Pence, although he is more outspoken and confrontational about his conservative beliefs and values than the former vice president.
A Yale Law school graduate and the author of Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir detailing his upbringing in Appalachia, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022.
A Trump critic in 2016, who went so far as to liken the former president to Hitler, the 39-year-old Vance has since become one of the candidate’s most loyal devotees, styling himself as a voice on behalf of cultural conservatives, rural voters, and blue-collar workers.
Vance often trolls and attacks his political opponents on social media, casting them as evil, depraved, stupid, or indifferent to working-class people, and hostile to religion or culturally conservative values.
Vance is well-known for advocating natalism in public policy, in which the government creates various financial and social incentives for people to marry and reproduce. He is one of several Republicans who frequently lavishs praise on right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for his domestic policies, particularly those aimed at cracking down on LGBTQ visibility and restricting immigration.
Orbán justifies his policies as an attempt to boost his country’s birth rate and maintain a singular, unified culture rooted in religious conservatism and traditionalist views of family.
In keeping with those views, Vance has previously attacked the “childless Left” for failing to “invest” in the United States by having children and promoting “national pride” and conservative social values. He argues that family formation and unencumbered reproduction — which, although he does not say it, would necessitate the societal rejection, or outlawing, of birth control and abortion — is needed to ensure stronger families.
Vance has attacked people for being “childless,” including U.S. Sen. Cory Booker and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both unmarried, as well as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, the father of a pair of adopted twins, and Vice President Kamala Harris, who has two step-children.
Vance has argued that parents with children should have a greater say in electoral politics, and how the government functions, than those without. He even appeared to suggest that only parents with children be allowed to vote, with people with multiple children potentially receiving multiple votes.
“Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of the children,” Vance said while addressing a political right-wing conference. “Doesn’t this mean that non-parents don’t have as much of a voice as parents? Doesn’t this mean that parents get a bigger say in how democracy functions? Yes.”
Accordingly, Vance is a fierce opponent of visibility for same-sex couples and LGBTQ individuals.
While his predecessor, Rob Portman, voted for the Respect for Marriage Act, Vance said back in 2022 that he would have voted against the legislation, which requires the federal government and state governments to recognize the validity of same-gender marriages performed legally in states without explicit bans on such unions. (The law was passed to circumvent a possible decision by the U.S. Supreme Court reversing the court’s 2015 Obergefell decision and restoring bans on same-sex marriages.)
Vance lambasted conservative Supreme Court justices after the court ruled, in 2020, by a 6-3 margin, that LGBTQ employees are protected from workplace discrimination by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, lamenting on social media, “The conservative legal movement has accomplished two things: libertarian political economy (enforced by judges) and betrayal of social conservatives and traditionalists.”
Vance introduced the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act,” which bans all types of gender-affirming health care while spreading what LGBTQ advocates say is misinformation about treatments like puberty blockers, hormone therapy, or gender confirmation surgery, the latter of which is rarely performed on minors.
The bill also prohibits taxpayer funds, including Medicaid dollars, from being used to cover the cost of gender-affirming care, and proposes up to 15 years in jail for anyone who assists a minor in obtaining gender-affirming treatments.
Vance has expressed support for “Don’t Say Gay”-style bills, like the one passed in Florida, with fewer restrictions, prohibiting teachers from answering questions, allowing discussions, or incorporating material related to LGBTQ identity in schools.
He has called people opposing such bills “groomers” who wish to “sexualize” children, has supported bans on books with LGBTQ content, and has claimed that bans on LGBTQ-related topics are a way to advance “parental rights.”
Vance also appears to oppose open military service by LGBTQ individuals, attacking military leaders and the Biden administration of “using America’s military as a social justice side project,” and opposing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the Armed Forces.
Vance, like Trump, opposes the United States’ support of Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russia. He has made comments sympathizing with Russia and its authoritarian president, Vladimir Putin.
Among those comments was a claim that the Biden administration was risking war with Russia, due to its support of Ukraine, simply because Putin opposes transgender rights. The independent fact-checking website Politifact rated the claim as “pants on fire,” signifying so false that it is not grounded in reality.
Vance has also ridiculed and questioned the existence of transgender and nonbinary individuals, accusing frequent foil Ocasi-Cortez of “inventing” the term “two-spirit” to refer to nonbinary Native American and Indigenous people.
“I’m sorry, but what the hell is two-spirit?” Vance asked in a post on X. “Would love if progressives just stopped inventing words.”
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