Have we no decency?

Army lawyer Joseph Welch directed the famous question, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” to the red-hunting U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy on June 9, 1954.

Seven decades later, it’s an open question whether many in Congress worry about having a sense of decency.

Chris Gallant is the Democrat running an uphill race in New York’s First Congressional District, which covers Long Island. He’s campaigned largely on his record as a volunteer firefighter and National Guard helicopter pilot, a biography that plays better in that red-leaning district than his liberal policy positions.

Then, the tabloid New York Post published pornographic photos of Gallant from about 15 years ago, when he and his male partner participated in a photo shoot to promote leather products at a San Francisco sex toy shop.

All of a sudden Gallant found himself at the center of a swirl of publicity, the first of his campaign. An op-ed in the New York Times published on Oct. 11, says that “Mr. Gallant has embraced his naughty brand, running ads that urge voters to ‘Make Politics Sexy Again.’ ‘I mean, all my friends know I’m kinky,’ he said in an interview with The Times. ‘I make Christian Grey look like amateur hour.’”

It’s not just that Gallant is making the most of what he’s calling his Kim Kardashian moment. It’s that the mainstream media is embracing Gallant. “Hunky Democratic candidate doubles down on kinky fetish,” proclaims the Daily Mail. A New York Times profile reports on this “good-looking guy” in his “tight black T-shirt that showed off his Marvel-worthy biceps.”

Christopher Gallant Wikimedia Commons / Jimgerbig

Liberal media outlets often do their best to confer the shine of celebrity on liberal politicians. If politics is Hollywood for ugly people, Gallant is just the rare politician who is actually good looking. I’m sure he would be showcasing his six pack on Jimmy Kimmel and The View right now were it not for FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s recent enforcement of the equal time statute.

But the response to the photos raises a deeper question: Do we expect decency of our politicians anymore? The Times seems not to think so—they published a pornography industry journalist’s op-ed saying, “Hopefully, we can one day achieve a world where all of us are post-shame. But in order to arrive there, we’ll need to fully grasp that there’s nothing demeaning about consensually enjoying sex, leashed or not.”

Similarly, Slate’s in-house LGBTQ columnist writes, “Voters don’t seem to care as much about the sex lives of their elected representatives as they used to.” In her view, “If the photos of Gallant truly depict a consensual assignation, and if he wasn’t betraying anyone’s trust by engaging in it, then there’s no reason at all to look askance at his actions. ... [T]his race is a good chance for Democrats to practice acclimatizing voters to the right kind of candidate sex story: the kind where no one did anything wrong.”

Call it the Heated Rivalry effect. That TV show features a pair of hunky male hockey players having frequent softcore gay sex, streamed by gay men, straight women, and liberals (but I repeat myself) nationwide. The HBO Max show averaged over 10 million views per episode. Heavy sales of the books on which the show is based are driving Random House’s profits. Heated Rivalry is just the gay version of prior cultural flashpoints, like Fifty Shades of Grey.

New Yorkers should vote against Gallant because he’s wrong on policy, not just because he participated in a clothing-free photo shoot 15 years ago. And I agree with him that politicians deserve some measure of privacy and a personal life. We cannot expect politicians to be perfect—all have sinned and fallen short of the mark.

But we can still maintain that decency is important, and when items like this emerge, we can lament rather than celebrate a culture that embraces San Francisco-style sexual promiscuity. If this is not over the line, what is?