A recently surfaced photo of Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, dressed as a woman is causing a stir online, with quick to note the clash with his current anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.
The photo, which shows Vance in a blonde wig and dress, was first posted online Sunday by podcast host Matt Bernstein. The source of the photo was Yale assistant professor Travis Whitfall, though it was taken by one of his classmates.
“It’s from a group chat of Vance’s fellow classmates and is from a friend of a friend. I believe it was grabbed from Facebook and was taken at a Halloween party,” Whitfall told The Daily Beast.
A spokesperson for Vance did not deny the photo’s authenticity to The Daily Beast, but they offered no further comment.
The photo, one of two that have now been posted online, quickly trended with the hashtag "#SofaLoren," a reference to the popular joke that Vance had sex with a couch.
Vance has a long history of support for anti-LGBTQ+ policies, prompting many to point out the Ohio Senator’s hypocrisy.
“There’s nothing wrong with dressing as a woman. There’s everything wrong with dressing as a woman and then taking the weird as fuck stance that drag performance, and by proxy LGBT people are deviants who deserve their rights limited,” one user wrote on X
When running for the U.S. Senate in 2022, Vance said he would have voted against he “Respect for Marriage Act,” which protects same-sex marriage from future Supreme Court decisions. He also introduced the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act,” which aims to criminalize gender-affirming medical care for minors.
