So just so we’re clear, he’s against this:
Republican Ohio U.S. Senate nominee J.D. Vance would oppose legislation to codify the right to marriage for same-sex couples, according to Mission: America, a Columbus based non-profit which bills itself as a ministry.
In a joint statement with Ohio Value Voters, Mission: America president Linda Harvey criticized the Ohio Republican congressmen who voted to pass the Respect for Marriage Act in the House.
“Homosexual couples embrace an ancient sin often involving high risk practices,” Harvey wrote. “These couples are never blessed with their own children, just one of the many limitations of such relationships. But homosexuals in America are often quite willing to corrupt other people’s children.”
Harvey went on to insist it’s actually the LGBTQ movement that is “intolerant,” and that they are responsible for everything from porn to “unnatural identities.” Separately, Harvey is concerned about witchcraft invading the church.
In his response to Mission: America, Vance explained he’d vote no on the Respect for Marriage Act if he were in office. According to their press release, he went on to state “the religious liberty piece of this is very bad.” No language in the bill directly implicates religion, and Vance’s campaign didn’t provide additional comment to explain his statement.
But is for this:
Speaking to Pacifica Christian High School last September, with the interview published by Vice News on Monday, Vance claimed that divorce inflicts terrible harm on children and that it would be better for people in unhappy marriages to stay together, even if said marriages are “violent.” Vance told the audience: “My grandparents had an incredibly chaotic marriage in a lot of ways. But they never got divorced. They were together to the end, till death do us part—that was a really important thing to my grandmother and my grandfather. That was clearly not true by the ’70s or ’80s. And I think that probably, I was personally, and a lot the kids in my community who grew up in my generation, personally suffered from the fact that a lot of moms and dads saw marriage as a basic contract, like any other business deal. Once it becomes no longer good for one of the parties or both of the parties, you just dissolve it and go on to a new business relationship. But that recognition that marriage was sacred I think was a really powerful thing that held a lot of families together. And when it disappeared, unfortunately a lot of kids suffered.” Vance opined that “it’s easy but also probably true to blame the sexual revolution of the 1960s” for this.
Vance writes in his book, Hillbilly Elegy, that his grandfather was a “violent drunk” and his grandmother a “violent non-drunk.” In one anecdote, he says that before he was born, his grandmother told his grandfather that she would kill him if he ever returned home drunk again—and when he did, she tried. “Mamaw, never one to tell a lie, calmly retrieved a gasoline canister from the garage, poured it all over her husband, lit a match, and dropped it on his chest. When Papaw burst into flames, their 11-year-old daughter jumped into action to put out the fire and save his life,” Vance writes. While Vance writes that his grandparents’ marriage improved by the time he was a kid, and that the two were a stable force in his life, it’s extremely disturbing that this person who wants to become one of the most powerful people in Ohio has also suggested that it was a good thing that two violent people—one of whom apparently tried to kill the other—stayed together, recommending that others take a page from their playbook.
While the above anecdote is obviously about a woman inflicting violence on a man, if Vance’s advice for married couples were taken, it would no doubt hurt women the most, as they are disproportionately affected by domestic violence. And while it probably won’t be news to anyone but Vance, according to the World Health Organization, “children who grow up in families where there is violence may suffer a range of behavioral and emotional disturbances. These can also be associated with perpetrating or experiencing violence later in life.” WHO also notes that “intimate partner violence has also been associated with higher rates of infant and child mortality and morbidity.” So yeah, maybe don’t listen to this guy about anything.
For Republicans running for the Senate this year, “Big Tech” has become a catchall target, a phrase used to condemn the censorship of conservative voices on social media, invasions of privacy and the corruption of America’s youth — or all of the above.
But for three candidates in some of the hottest races of 2022 — Blake Masters, J.D. Vance and Mehmet Oz — the denunciations come with a complication: They have deep ties to the industry, either as investors, promoters or employees. What’s more, their work involved some of the questionable uses of consumer data that they now criticize.
Mr. Masters and Mr. Vance have embraced the contradictions with the zeal of the converted.
“Fundamentally, it is my expertise from having worked in Silicon Valley and worked with these companies that has given me this perspective,” Mr. Masters, who enters the Republican primary election for Senate in Arizona on Tuesday with the wind at his back, said on Wednesday. “As they have grown, they have become too pervasive and too powerful.”
Mr. Vance, on the website of his campaign for Ohio’s open Senate seat, calls for the breakup of large technology firms, declaring: “I know the technology industry well. I’ve worked in it and invested in it, and I’m sick of politicians who talk big about Big Tech but do nothing about it. The tech industry promised all of us better lives and faster communication; instead, it steals our private information, sells it to the Chinese, and then censors conservatives and others.”
But some technology activists simply aren’t buying it, especially not from two political newcomers whose Senate runs have been bankrolled by Peter Thiel, the first outside investor in Facebook and a longtime board member of the tech giant. Mr. Thiel’s own company, Palantir, works closely with federal military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies eager for access to its secretive data analysis technology.
“There’s a massive, hugely profitable industry in tracking what you do online,” said Sacha Haworth, the executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, a new liberal interest group pressing for stricter regulations of technology companies. “Regardless of these candidates’ prospects in the Senate, I would imagine if Peter Thiel is investing in them, he is investing in his future.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Tim Ryan (D. OH-13) is kicking Vance fake populist ass:
The Democrat is airing ads on Fox News, talking incessantly about China and promising to put "Americans first" in a state where former President Donald Trump won by healthy margins. His Republican opponent, "Hillbilly Elegy" author J.D. Vance, has Trump’s endorsement but is facing criticism that he's coasting while Ryan outraises, outspends and outworks him.
Although independent polling has been scarce, some local GOP leaders believe that the general election is too close for comfort and have had trouble concealing their frustrations. "They are burning bridges faster than they can build them," one Republican operative in the state, who requested anonymity to be frank, said of Vance's campaign.
Ryan, meanwhile, is presenting himself as a post-partisan populist —as someone a voter might mistake for a Republican.
"Conservatives aren't wrong about everything," Ryan told NBC News in an interview this week after touring a business incubator inside an old rubber factory in downtown Akron. "Democrats aren't right about everything."
The open Senate seat — Republican incumbent Rob Portman is not seeking re-election — has set the stage for a clash over political identity and authenticity. Will Ohioans continue their rightward turn toward Trumpism by choosing Vance, once a loud Trump critic who now embraces the right-wing culture wars? Or will they reward Ryan, a 10-term representative and past presidential candidate who emphasizes kitchen-table issues, keeps his distance from President Joe Biden and targets the working-class voters who have fled the Democratic Party?
"A lot of people just know s--- is broken," Ryan said. "We're all mad at each other. The pandemic sucked — economic collapse, we're all pissed off. ... So, who's going to be the one who steps up and says, 'OK, lay down your arms?' Let's figure it out. Let's talk."
Ryan's GOP-friendly message has caught attention, to the point where Vance can't make fundraising calls without hearing about it.
"I actually spoke to a donor yesterday who told me that he thought Tim Ryan was running in the Republican primary," Vance said in a telephone interview. "And he was confused because he thought the Republicans' primary was over."