JD Vance once wrote that he 'convinced myself that I was gay' when he was a kid
FacebookEmailXLinkedInRedditBlueskyWhatsAppCopy linkImpact Link
SaveSaved Read in app
This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? .
JD Vance wrote in "Hillbilly Elegy" that he once became convinced he was gay when he was a kid.
"The only thing I knew about homosexual men was that they preferred men to women," he wrote.
His grandmother rapidly put that notion to rest, asking him: "JD, do you want to suck dicks?"
According to Sen. JD Vance's best-selling "Hillbilly Elegy," the Ohio senator once told his grandmother that he idea he might be gay.
Vance, now former President Donald Trump's vice presidential nominee, recounted the tale in his 2016 autobiography as he discussed his grandmother's relatively tolerant approach when it came to Christian teachings.
In Vance's telling, the episode occurred when he was just a kid. As he wrote:
"I'll never forget the hour I convinced myself that I was gay. I was eight or nine,
ICYMI: How JD Vance Betrayed His Transgender Friend for the Sake of His Political Ambition
by Cullen Peele •
Recently unearthed emails and text messages from JD Vance in his rule school years portray a male very different from the MAGA bully today, a man who will turn against his control LGBTQ+ friends to score points with the MAGA fringe
WASHINGTON, D.C. - In a piece published by the New York Times over the weekend, Sofia Nelson, a former Yale Law Educational facility classmate of JD Vance, mutual details of how Donald Trump’s running mate was once a close friend who empathized with marginalized Americans, including LGBTQ+ people, and Nelson’s own transgender self. Nelson, who is now a public defender living in Detroit, provided text messages and emails from Vance that not only quote the Ohio senator’s previous disdain for Trump, but even his participation in Pride celebrations and his concern about police brutality and racial equity.
These revelations are more proof of who JD Vance really is: a bully and a coward, whose only allegiance is to might and ambition, and who will betray those closest to him in order to be acknowledged
JD Vanceâs boyhood mistaken same-sex attracted confession story smacks of head-spinning inflation
Political Mercury
By Douglas Burns
1/1/2025
In reading the-then (and now-again) publishing sensation âHillbilly Elegyâ eight years ago as it announced a culture-crashing modern voice, I found myself stopping at points in the book, both annoyed and doubtful of its authorâs authenticity.
Iâd intended to fiercely pan âHillbilly Elegyâ in reviews, but I was persuaded then that JD Vance was an honest-intentioned guy with a platform who could lift rural reaches of the nation like my hometown of Carroll.
Whatâs more, Vance is a gifted writer, and the narrative pace of âElegyâ kept me hooked. But the suggestions, in the book itself and reviews, that rural America is some sort of monolith infuriated me. Southern reaches of Ohio are not western Iowa. Our economies and people and cultures are vastly different.
I do know salty-dog, sailor-mouthed, world-weary, seen-it-all rural women like his grandmother, Bonnie Blanton, a defining figure in Vanceâs life whom he affectionally called âMamaw.â Vance peppered his Republican National Convention speech with
“I broached this issue with Mamaw, confessing that I was gay and I was worried that I would burn in hell. She said, “Don’t be a fucking idiot, how would you know that you’re gay?” I explained my consideration process. Mamaw chuckled and seemed to consider how she might explain to a boy my age. Finally she asked, “J.D., act you want to suck dicks?” I was flabbergasted. Why would someone crave to do that? She repeated herself, and I said, “Of course not!” “Then,” she said, “you’re not queer . And even if you did wish to suck dicks, that would be okay. God would still love you.” That settled the matter. Apparently I didn’t have to worry about organism gay anymore. Now that I’m older, I recognize the profundity of her sentiment: Gay people, though unfamiliar, threatened nothing about Mamaw’s being. There were more important things for a Christian to worry about.”
― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis