Advocacy groups criticize JD Vance’s ‘cruel’ record on LGBTQ issues

Former President Donald Trump announced Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, as his vice presidential running mate Monday, sparking near-immediate backlash from some of the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy groups, who called attention to his support for policies and rhetoric targeting the community.

Both the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ rights organization, and GLAAD, a national LGBTQ media advocacy group, released lists of comments Vance had made and policies he had supported relevant to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community.

HRC and GLAAD noted that Vance introduced a bill last year called the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, which would have banned transition-related medical care, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and operations, for minors nationally. The bill, which was never taken up in committee, would have charged health care providers who violated it with a class C felony, which is punishable by up to 15 years in prison, and also would have banned institutions of higher education and accrediting entities from providing instruction about gender-affirming care.

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In October, a few months after he introduced the transition-related health care bill, Vance introduced the Passport Sanity Act, a bill to ban “X” gender markers on U.S. passports, an option that the State Department rolled out in April 2022. The bill was also never taken up in committee.

“The last thing the State Department should be doing is wasting its time and your tax dollars pushing far-left