Las Vegas Sun89%
From adultery to assault, how should we respond to our politicians' sexual misconduct? 59%
By Ryan Sanders0%
7/23/2026, 2:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 20 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Indoctrination, and Anecdotal, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 14.7% saturation with 164 hits. Analysis detected 972 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,118 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 55.6% and a BS Rank of 59% (8,705 of 21,176 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 58.90% of the article peer group.
The problem of politicians and loose sexual morals is nothing new.
It just seems like we are in a particularly bad pattern recently.
The latest, but surely not last, is Graham Platner, forced to drop out of the U.S.
Senate race in Maine after allegations of sexual assault from a former girlfriend.
Before the allegation of that terrible crime became public, he was accused of cheating on his wife with multiple women, using a dating app.
And, of course, there's Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, caught on video boarding a flight to Iceland for a getaway with his alleged girlfriend, Christian influencer Tracy Duhon.
That's a different girlfriend than Laura Olson, the alleged mistress he had before his wife, state Sen.
Angela Paxton, divorced him on biblical grounds, and the Texas House tried to do the same.
Platner and Paxton are joining a long parade of philandering politicians.
Before them it was President Donald Trump who boasted of sexual assault on a secretly recorded video and was later found liable for the sexual abuse of columnist E.
Jean Carroll.
Before Trump, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and Nevada Sen.
John Ensign.
Before them, it was President Bill Clinton whose commitment to his wife turned out to be less than resolute.
Before that, President John F.
Kennedy's revolving bedroom door, Thomas Jefferson's troubling relationship with the enslaved Sally Hemings, and Alexander Hamilton's hush money affair with Maria Reynolds.
And those are just a few of the most prominent American examples.
This problem is older than our nation.
It stretches back to antiquity, at least as far as Israel's King David, who had an affair and then arranged to have the husband of his mistress killed, but turned out to be "a man after God's own heart" and probably Israel's greatest leader.
World leaders have been cheating on their spouses and using their power as a sexual tool for as long as they've been in positions to do so.
So it's hard to be surprised when powerful men (and let's be honest, it's just about always men) act this way.
When it comes to consensual affairs, it can be hard to gin up outrage over something that happens so regularly.
And even credible allegations of assault, like Trump's and Platner's, are now too often brushed aside by those who are politically aligned.
But the more this happens, the more we risk that unscrupulous men will numb our scruples.
It seems to me that reactions to this kind of news have lately been sorted into three buckets.
Some excuse affairs as irrelevant.
What's private is private, they say.
Or the line that has become popular with Christian Trump supporters in recent years: "I'm electing a president, not a pastor."
Often, those supporters pivot from defending the cheater to criticizing news outlets that report on his sins.
They call it tabloid sensationalism.
And there is some truth in that.
A visit to Google Trends shows that image searches for Platner's accuser Jenny Racicot shot up around the same time web searches did.
Lots of news consumers, it seems, wanted to know what she looks like.
The voyeur element is hard to ignore.
But excusing a politician's private immorality while asking voters to trust his public ethics is foolish.
Politicians are in positions of public trust, and adultery is a breach of trust.
If a politician will betray his spouse, he'll betray his constituents when the right temptation comes along.
The second bucket is the pearl clutchers who act surprised that affairs happen, which is silly because, first, no one is surprised by a pattern repeated this long.
Second, public servants can do public good even as they do bad in their private lives (see the aforementioned Jefferson and David).
And third, we all experience sexuality in a broken way.
Sure, adultery is far beyond habits like porn or romance novels or shame, but it's just another shade on the same gradient.
Eden is long gone.
Then there's the third and newer category of bad reaction to cheater news: enjoying it.
Decades of reality TV and social media have trained us to believe the appropriate response to adultery is to get out the popcorn and binge the drama.
Americans can't look away from a train wreck, even if families, lives, social mores and constitutional norms are wrecked too.
Even worse, our reactions often get sorted by party.
If the misbehaving politician is from my party, I'm ready with Bible verses about grace and forgiveness.
If he's from the other party, I'm all judgment and righteous indignation.
We can talk ourselves into being offended by Platner and sympathetic to Trump, or vice versa.
The final element, and one that doesn't get enough attention, is the leader's response to his error.
Hiding or excusing our sins shows weak character and makes the indiscretion even more serious for people being asked to trust these leaders.
That's the course Clinton and Trump took, for instance.
King David, on the other hand, chose the path of repentance, and it informed the rest of his reign and his legacy.
So how should we react when these news stories come along?
First, don't vote for these men.
A person who commits sexual assault belongs in prison, not in office.
And even in the case of consensual affairs, voters should beware.
An adulterer is, by definition, someone who can't be trusted to keep promises.
And a political candidate is, by definition, someone who makes promises.
So don't entrust cheaters with your vote, regardless of what party they belong to.
Second, an adulterer deserves pity, not attention.
Neither defending them nor shaming them is going to do them or society any good.
Their families need time out of the public eye to deal with the fallout from their actions.
That's why running for office — not to mention recruiting your daughter to defend you in public, as Paxton has done — is the wrong move.
During the 10 years I worked in ministry, I saw marriages at their best and at their worst.
I saw adultery end marriages, but I also saw couples recover from it, doing the hard work of repentance, healing and growth.
That work takes enormous strength and faithfulness — the very things absent in an adulterer — but God still works miracles.
There might be a miraculous future for Ken Paxton or even someone accused of something as terrible as Platner is.
That's up to them and God and the people they hurt.
But it shouldn't be up to voters.
Voters should leave them out.
Ryan Sanders is a columnist for The Dallas Morning News.
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