Republican Congressman Undermines Sanctity of Marriage

[Content Note: Heterocentrism; homophobia; coercion.]

Whooooooooooops!

Freshman GOP Rep. Vance McAllister of Louisiana — who ran for office as a principled conservative Christian — has been caught on video in a romantic encounter with a woman believed to be on his congressional staff just before Christmas.

...The video shows McAllister kissing a woman identified by the newspaper as a congressional staffer for the first-term lawmaker. Federal payroll records show she is a part-time aide who began working for McAllister the day after he won his seat last year.

...McAllister's Washington office door was locked Monday. He issued a statement in the afternoon apologizing for the incident and asking for forgiveness.

McAllister also asked for privacy as his family deals with the fallout from the scandal. McAllister and his wife, Kelly, have five children.

"There's no doubt I've fallen short and I'm asking for forgiveness. I'm asking for forgiveness from God, my wife, my kids, my staff, and my constituents who elected me to serve," McAllister said in his statement.

In the nearly ten years I've been writing in this space, I've had occasion to write about an awful lot of married Republican legislators' infidelities. I think we might want to criminalize allowing Republicans to serve in a public capacity, because it's undermining the sanctity of marriage.

Of course I'm not being serious. But the suggestion makes about as much sense as the argument, made by these very people, that same-sex marriage undermines the sanctity of different-sex marriage, that it somehow threatens their marriages.

So maybe conservative Republicans can stop making this garbage argument.

In truth, Rep. McAllister's marriage is none of my business, and I have no idea what agreements he and his wife may or may not have had. My only concern is whether he was using taxpayer dollars to give a long-time romantic partner a not-job to be near him, and/or whether he coerced an employee to have a sexual relationship with him in exchange for employment. And what kind of potentially hostile workplace environment that may have created either way.