This story, which exploded my head, got very little commentary on Ethics Alarms last week, which surprised me. Maybe I wasn’t sufficiently clear: sex workers, prostitutes and whack jobs have run for state legislatures from time immemorial, but they are usually considered fringe campaigns and publicity stunts (you know, like Donald Trump’s campaign in 2015) and considered barely worth discussing by reporters. But the Democratic Party in Virginia is actively defending Gibson, really and truly saying that Gibson’s conduct online is just fine because no law was broken. This stance magnifies the possibility that the entire party has 1) lost its collective mind and 2) now has the comprehension of ethics, civics, society and public service of the average muskrat.
Now Gibson, who, if you haven’t read the post, has engaged in graphic sex acts with her husband in videos for the porn site Chaturbate even as she in running to be a Virginia lawmaker, is being enthusiastically defended by her party, despite the fact that the fun couple was offering to take requests for their porn performances in exchange for money. “Y’all can watch me pee if you tip me and some tokens,” Gibson can be heard saying in one graphic videos. “Again, I’m raising money for a good cause.”
I thought the fact that Gibson and her party were actually claiming that Republicans and the media were engaging in illegal “revenge porn” and somehow doing something wrong by alerting the public that a candidate was misrepresenting her character, activities and kinks in her campaign material was sufficient to ping ethics alarms, but maybe not. So let’s drill down more deeply into the muck:










