At a 2021 event hosted by a private high school in Newport Beach, Republican Vice Presidential Candidate J.D. Vance said that after the sexual revolution of the 1960s, children suffered when their parents divorced, even when the marriage had been happy or “perhaps even violent.”
Vance, author of 2016 Bestselling Memoir “Hillbilly Elegy”told the crowd at the Orange County event that her 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 deal.”
“This is one of the best tricks I think the sexual revolution has played on the American people,” Vance said. “This idea that, well, these marriages were basically — you know, they were probably violent, too, but of course they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them, and making it easier for people to change spouses like they change their underwear, will make people happier in the long run.”
He added: “And maybe it worked for the mothers and the fathers, although I doubt it. But it really didn’t work for the children of those marriages. And I think we all need to be honest about that. We’ve run this experiment in real time and what we’ve found is very real family dysfunction is making our children miserable.”
Vance spoke at an event hosted by Pacifica Christian High School a year before he was elected to the U.S. Senate. Pacifica’s head of school, David O’Neill, confirmed to the Times that the school hosted Vance off-campus as part of a community speaking series. He said the event was not for fundraising.
“The evening was wonderful and Mr. Vance was very well received,” O’Neill said.
Vance’s comment was Posted 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. hotly contested The coastal Orange County district is currently represented by Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine).
His campaign confirmed that Baugh is on the board of trustees of Pacifica, which organized the Vance event.
Democratic state Senator Dave Min, who Race against Baughdescribed Vance’s comments as “radical” and “dangerous”, and called on Baugh to denounce them.
“Anybody who knows anything about domestic violence knows that what J.D. Vance is saying is appalling — it’s ignorant, it’s reprehensible,” Min said in an interview.
Min’s wife, a law professor at UC Irvine, runs a legal aid clinic that provides pro bono representation to survivors of domestic violence.
“Domestic violence is never acceptable, under any circumstances,” Baugh said in a statement. “I stand with the victims of domestic violence and, frankly, all crimes.”
The Trump-Vance campaign did not respond to a request for comment, nor did press representatives from Vance’s Senate office.
When asked in 2022 if he thought couples caught in violent relationships would be better off staying married for the sake of their children, Vance said a spokesperson said He said he rejected the premise of a “fake question”.
Vance said that his reference to the sexual revolution’s “one big trick” was to “imply that domestic violence would somehow decrease if progressives got what they wanted, when in fact modern society’s war on families has made our domestic violence situation worse. Any fair-minded person would understand that I was criticizing the progressive framework on this issue, not embracing it.”
The reported rate of domestic violence in the US has decreased during Vance’s lifetime.
In “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance turns a raw lens on his family’s domestic violence, divorce and addiction. Vance’s mother was a drug addict, and Vance was raised by his grandparents, whose relationship, he said, was turbulent and violent.
Vance wrote in the book that his grandfather, whom he called Papa, “was a violent alcoholic” and his grandmother, whom he called Mama, “was a violent non-alcoholic.” He said that one night Mama threatened to kill Papa if he came home drunk again. A week later, Papa came home drunk and fell asleep on the couch.
“The mother, who never lies, calmly removed a canister 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 was engulfed in flames, which were extinguished by his 11-year-old daughter.
Vance’s grandparents were separated for many years, but they did not divorce, he wrote. “They stayed together until the end, until death do us part,” Vance said at the Orange County event. “That was a really important thing to my grandmother and my grandfather. That obviously wasn’t true until the ’70s or ’80s.”
The program’s moderator asked Vance what cultural paths or government policies he would support to “revive faith in the institution of marriage among Americans.” Vance said that, among other ideas, he would look to Hungary for inspiration.
In an effort to halt the country’s declining birth rate, in 2019 the government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced a plan to reduce the number of births in Hungary. Offering subsidized loans Newly married couples are given up to 10 million forints (about $27,500) if the bride is under 41 years old.
The loan is forgiven if the couple has at least three children. Couples who divorce, move abroad or remain childless after five years must repay the loan with interest.
“It’s really crazy,” Vance said of the policy. “The number of marriages has gone up a lot, and the number of stable, long-term marriages has gone up a lot.”
Times staff writer Hailey Branson-Potts contributed to this report.
