- 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 gay men was that they preferred men to women," he wrote.
- His grandmother quickly 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 thought 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 time I convinced myself that I was gay. I was eight or nine, maybe younger, and I stumbled upon a broadcast by some fire-and-brimstone preacher. The man spoke about the evils of homosexuals, how they had infiltrated our society, and how they were all destined for hell absent some serious repenting. At the time, the only thing I knew about gay men was that they preferred men to women. This described me perfectly: I disliked girls, and my best friend in the world was my buddy Bill. Oh no, I'm going to hell."
When he brought up the issue with his grandmother — known to Vance as "Mamaw" — she replied bluntly: "Don't be a fucking idiot, how would you know that you're gay?"
When Vance explained his reasoning, she laughed.
"JD, do you want to suck dicks?" she said, according to the book.
The young Vance, apparently "flabbergasted," said: "Of course not!"
"Then you're not gay. And even if you did want to suck dicks, that would be okay," she replied. "God would still love you."
Vance wrote that the episode helped him recognize that "gay people, though unfamiliar, threatened nothing about Mamaw's being. There were more important things for a Christian to worry about."
Vance contrasted that approach with the one taken by his biological father, Donald Bowman, who he reconnected with when he was 11. Vance's father was a member of a more religiously conservative church, the ideology of which had "made the world a scary and foreign place," in Vance's recounting.
Now a 39-year-old US senator, Vance has largely opposed LGBTQ rights, including opposing the Respect for Marriage Act, a bill to protect same-sex marriage that passed before he was sworn into office.
Over the course of his 18-month Senate tenure, Vance's focus has been directed more toward curtailing transgender rights, rather than gay rights. Last year, he introduced a bill to criminalize gender-affirming care for minors.
"Most Americans, I think, don't really care about same-sex marriage," Vance told Business Insider last year.