We’ve learned since the Clinton era that voters are willing to forgive an ever-expanding range of previously taboo behaviors from their officeholders, provided children are not involved. I have a weak heart and might not be able to withstand it.) (If you’re a candidate, this is not a dare. The transgression here isn’t connected to sex as much as it is to privacy - it’s like somebody giving you a chance to watch them vacate their bowels, something that remains taboo for complicated and long-term reasons that might not stand for long if some candidate decided to test it. According to the Daily Mail, not an always reliable source, one clip has Gibson offering her paying audience the chance to see her have a non-missionary sex position with her husband or witness a “golden shower.” Billions of such consensual videos like this reside on the internet, and plenty of couples engage in such acts daily. It’s not even extramarital! Granted, her performances proved that she and her husband are exhibitionists of the highest order, but we accommodate exhibitionists all the time without clucking our tongues. On one level - and spare me the reflexive scolding - what’s so appalling about what Gibson streamed? For one thing, as the Post notes, there’s nothing illegal about Gibson’s online adventure. The answer will come, of course, from the suburban Richmond district she hopes to represent, but as all politics have gone national, it becomes a question for us to answer, too. The less prurient question here is whether Gibson’s online performance should somehow disqualify her from office. What may be more likely is she and her team are trying to fill the air with legal chaff that will help keep her campaign alive. Maybe copyright laws were violated here, but revenge porn? Nah. The fact that somebody recorded her performances that she already shared with her Chaturbate audience, and that somebody then shared them with a Republican who then shared them with the Post, hardly qualifies as harassment. The livestreams of her having sex with her husband were made with her consent for an established audience. When you livestream sex acts on a site where you have 5,700 followers and it doesn’t require a password, can you convince a judge and jury that your expectations of privacy have been violated? Likewise, her lawyer’s idea that it violates Virginia’s revenge porn law is a stretch. What Gibson and her lawyer lack in legal acumen, they make up for in moxie. Katie Hill resigned from Congress a few years ago after nude pictures of her were released amid a messy divorce and allegations of inappropriate relationships with aides.īut rather than skulking away in shame and dropping out of the race, Gibson has gone on the offensive, protesting the “leak” of the sex performance and prospecting previously undiscovered legal territory by calling the distribution of the videos “an illegal invasion” of her privacy and a “sex crime” against her. Some politicians don’t try to tough it out. New generations of politicians have grown up in a world where it’s commonplace to record their every move and misadventure, so we can expect to see more of this in the coming years. Today, people’s lives are more and more online. While the Post story might seem to spell the nurse practitioner’s political ruin, we shouldn’t be so hasty to write her off. But never before Gibson’s case has a politician’s hot video action spread on the internet. And, of course, in 1998, President Bill Clinton collapsed the day’s existing moral standards when he did the same with an intern inside the White House.Īnd so on. In the 1990s, Congress could have passed for a swingers club as a passel of high-ranking members, including Bob Barr, Dan Burton, Robert Livingston, Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde and Pete Domenici engaged in sexual affairs. Barney Frank, lived with a male escort who said he ran his prostitution service out of Frank’s apartment. A number of members have been convicted for having sex with underage pages.
Members of Congress always seem to be getting busted for hiring prostitutes.
Politicians have long transgressed polite society’s sexual boundaries. And they solicited “tips” for performing requested moves. Susanna Gibson, a Democratic nominee for a competitive seat in the Virginia House of Delegates, toppled a previously untouched political taboo this week when the Washington Post fairly reported that she and her husband had performed sex acts on the online forum known as “Chaturbate,” where the couple had 5,700 followers.
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