Crisis Magazine releases an interview with J.D. Vance in which he tells staff writer Jessica Kramer that pornography should be fully banned in the United States.
Vance’s argument is that pornography — in combination with abortion — causes “isolation” and hampers young adults’ ability to start families.
“I spoke with Vance,” wrote Kramer, adding, “when I asked his thoughts on porn and birth control and their effects on familial decline, Vance admitted he wants to outright ban pornography: ‘I think the combination of porn, abortion have basically created a really lonely, isolated generation that isn’t getting married, they’re not having families, and they’re actually not even totally sure how to interact with each other.”’
This is not the first time Vance has attacked pornography. In a keynote speech to the National Conservatism Conference in 2019, J.D. Vance linked pornography to the demise of American families. (National Conservatism is a polished rebrand of Christian Nationalism, and these conferences are backed in part by J.D. Vance-funder Peter Thiel.)
“I’ve been blown away by some of the research I’ve seen, that talks about the way in which pornography warps young adolescent minds and how they interact with their environment and how they interact with their own sexuality,” Vance said. “We know that young adults are marrying less, they’re having less children, they’re engaging in healthier and productive relationships less and less.”
Vance continued: “We know one of the causes of this, under the guise of libertarianism, is [allowing] pornography to seep even into our youngest minds through the channels of the internet. Again, we made a political choice that the freedom to consume pornography was more important than the public goods like marriage and family and happiness.”
Vance’s comments on pornography resurfaced during his 2022 senatorial campaign, which he ended up winning against Democratic opponent Tim Ryan.
As reported by adult-entertainment news site XBiz in 2024, Vance himself may have been responsible for renewed interest in those past quotes about porn. “At the time, it was suggested that Vance’s own campaign was behind the renewed attention to the statements in order to court anti-porn voters following his win in the Ohio primary.”
“Banning porn is also a core tenet of Project 2025, a controversial initiative led by the Heritage Foundation with the objective to remake the U.S. government and American society along hard-right, Christian Nationalist lines in the event of a Donald Trump victory… Project 2025 proposes the re-criminalization of all porn production and distribution, and considers most LGBTQ+ content of any kind to be pornographic.”
XBiz, 2024
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