At a 2021 event hosted by a private Newport Beach high school, soon-to-be Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance said that after the sexual revolution of the 1960s, children suffered when their parents divorced, even when the marriages were unhappy or “perhaps even violent.”
Vance, author of the 2016 best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” told the crowd at the Orange County event that his grandparents did not divorce despite an “incredibly chaotic marriage in many ways,” and said some couples now view marriage as a “basic contract, like any other business agreement.”
“I think this is one of the great tricks that the sexual revolution has forced on the American population,” Vance said. “It’s the idea that, well, these marriages were fundamentally violent, but they were certainly unhappy. So getting rid of them and making it easier for people to change spouses like they change underwear is going to make people happier in the long run.”
He added: “And maybe it worked for the moms and dads, although I’m skeptical. But it didn’t really work for the children of those marriages. And I think that’s something we should all be honest about. We’ve run this experiment in real time and what we have is a lot of very, very real family dysfunction that is making our children unhappy.”
Vance spoke at an event hosted by Pacifica Christian High School the year before his election to the U.S. Senate. David O’Neil, the head of Pacifica, confirmed to The Times that the school hosted Vance off campus as part of a series of community talks. He said the event was not a fundraiser.
“The evening was wonderful and Mr. Vance was very well received,” O'Neil said.
Vance's comments were published online by Vice News during Vance's successful 2022 Senate campaign in Ohio.
California Democrats are trying to link Vance’s comments to Republican Scott Baugh, who is running for Congress in a hotly contested coastal Orange County district where Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) is not seeking reelection.
Baugh sits on the board of directors of Pacifica, which hosted Vance's event, his campaign confirmed.
Democratic state Sen. Dave Min, who is running against Baugh, called Vance’s comments “radical” and “dangerous” and called on Baugh to disavow them.
“Anyone who knows anything about domestic violence knows that what JD Vance is saying is horrible — it’s ignorant and it’s reprehensible,” Min said in an interview.
Min's wife, a law professor at UC Irvine, runs a legal aid clinic that provides free representation to survivors of domestic violence.
“Domestic violence is never acceptable, under any circumstances,” Baugh said in a statement. “I stand with victims of domestic violence and, frankly, all crimes.”
The Trump-Vance campaign did not respond to a request for comment, nor did press representatives for Vance's Senate office.
Asked in 2022 whether he thought it would be better for couples in violent relationships to remain married for the sake of their children, Vance said through a spokesperson that he rejected the premise of the “bogus question.”
Vance said his reference to “one of the great tricks” of the sexual revolution was the claim that “domestic violence would somehow go down if progressives had their way, when in fact modern society’s war on families has made our domestic violence situation much worse. Any fair-minded person would recognize that he was criticizing the progressive framework on this issue, not supporting it.”
The rate of reported domestic violence in the United States has declined over Vance's lifetime.
In “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance starkly discusses his family’s struggles with domestic violence, divorce and addiction. Vance’s mother was addicted to drugs and Vance was raised by his grandparents, whose relationship he said was tumultuous and violent.
His grandfather, whom he called Papaw, was “a violent drunk,” Vance wrote in the book, and his grandmother, whom he called Mamaw, was a “violent non-drunk.” One night, he said, Mamaw threatened to kill Papaw if he came home drunk. A week later, Papaw came home drunk and fell asleep on the couch.
“Mamaw, who never lies, calmly took a can of gasoline from the garage, poured it over her husband, lit a match and dropped it on his chest,” Vance wrote. He said his grandfather burst into flames that were extinguished by his 11-year-old daughter.
Vance’s grandparents were separated for many years but did not divorce, she wrote. They were “together until the end, until death do us part,” Vance said at the Orange County event. “That was a very big thing for my grandmother and grandfather. That was clearly not the case in the ’70s or ’80s.”
The event moderator asked Vance what cultural or government policy avenues he would support to “revitalize Americans’ belief in the institution of marriage.” Vance said that, among other ideas, he would look to Hungary for inspiration.
In an effort to counter the country's declining birth rate, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government in 2019 began offering subsidized loans of up to $27,500 to newly married couples if the bride is under 41.
Loans are forgiven if couples have at least three children. Couples who divorce, move abroad or remain childless after five years must repay the loans, including interest.
“It's crazy,” Vance said of the policy. “The number of marriages has skyrocketed, and the number of stable, long-term marriages has skyrocketed.”
Times staff writer Hailey Branson-Potts contributed to this report.
