Abstinence-Supporting GOP State Lawmaker Admits To Sex With 22-Year-Old Intern

By Zachary Roth - July 23, 2009, 4:19PM

Paging Keith Olbermann. You can call off the search...we've found your Worst Person in the World for tonight.

Meet Tennessee state senator Paul Stanley. He's a solid conservative Republican and married father of two, who according to his website is "a member of Christ United Methodist Church, where he serves as a Sunday school teacher and board member of their day school." (Check out the religious imagery on the site -- the sun poking through clouds, as if manifesting God's presence -- which of course shows Stanley's deeply pious nature.)

Stanley recently sponsored a bill designed to prevent gay couples from adopting children. And when a Planned Parenthood official recently sought his support for family planning services for Memphis teens, Stanley told her, according to the official, that he "didn't believe young people should have sex before marriage anyway, that his faith and church are important to him, and he wants to promote abstinence."

So far, so far Republican. But you can see where this is going...

In a sworn affidavit, a Tennessee state investigator has said that Stanley admitted to having a "sexual relationship" with a 22-year-old female intern working in his office, and to taking nude pictures of her in "provocative poses" in his apartment.

Things started to unravel for Stanley, it seems, in April, when he received a text message reading:

Good morning sir, how are you this fine day? McKensie and I have been talking and I feel that I have a video and some pictures you might be interested in seeing. This is her boyfriend, that guy you met outside Walgreens.

That was the start of an effort by the girl's boyfriend to blackmail Stanley, which ultimately led to Stanley going to the cops. The boyfriend is now charged with trying to extort $10,000 from Stanley.

Oh, bonus! Stanley works as a financial adviser for the Stanford Financial Group, whose founder, Allen Stanford, has been charged with orchestrating an $8 billion scam.

Wonder if Stanley stays at C Street when he's in DC.

Late Update: It gets worse. In 1994, Stanley's first wife, Judy Martin, filed for a restraining order against him, charging that he had physically assaulted her three times. She wrote: "He was going out the door to leave our house and he hit me with a tremendous blow and then he proceeded to turn and run away from me outside the garage to the street." Stanley and Martin divorced the following year.

According to the Nashville Post, Stanley met his current wife, Kristi Stanley, soon afterwards, while both were working for Bill Frist's U.S. Senate office in Memphis. She was working as -- an intern.

85 Comments

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This is just tooooooooooo precious.

THE HYPOCRISY WILL NOT STOP.

Watch, five years from now this fellow will be 'reborn'.

But then, as has been pointed out here and several other sites, the C-Street crowd does not believe that the CODE applies to the CHOSEN. HA!!!!!

Posted by dickday
July 23, 2009 4:37 PM | Reply | Permalink

It's a Walk With God all covet but only few get to enjoy.

Posted by Chris in reply to a comment from dickday
July 24, 2009 9:10 AM | Reply | Permalink

Watching the modern day Republican party is like watching a Three Stooges marathon.

Posted by JohnW1141
July 23, 2009 4:48 PM | Reply | Permalink

You insult the Three Stooges. And I've never been able to tolerate the Three Stooges.

Posted by JNagarya in reply to a comment from JohnW1141
July 23, 2009 9:05 PM | Reply | Permalink

Abstinence only...

This is a great example of why abstinence programs fail miserably. People will NOT abstain. And when they depend on abstinence only, the result is a pregnancy.

The Radical Religious Right is correct that abstinence works. They are dead wrong that abstinence programs work. They try to confuse the two by maintaining that since abstinence works, abstinence programs must also work.

This all goes back to their position that sex is evil and must be rigidly controlled - by them, and that any sex not in accordance with their religious beliefs must be "punished" by a pregnancy and 22 years of childraising.
.

Posted by Johann in reply to a comment from JNagarya
July 24, 2009 8:36 AM | Reply | Permalink

Oh, calm down. He's just preparing for a U.S. Senate run.

Posted by sunnysteve
July 23, 2009 4:52 PM | Reply | Permalink

I'm losing track - how many righteous Christian Republican have found their d***ks caught in the wrong place? Vitter, Gibbons, Sanford, Ensign, Pickering, who am I forgetting?

Posted by Powkat
July 23, 2009 5:08 PM | Reply | Permalink

a) Newt Gingrich (OK, he was not exactly CAUGHT, but admitted to an adulterous relationship while trying to get Clinton impeached).

b) Rep. Mark Foley (and his unforgettable text messages to teenage Congress pages)

c) Sen. Larry Craig (and the infamous bathroom incident)

Posted by Alguien in reply to a comment from Powkat
July 23, 2009 5:48 PM | Reply | Permalink

Oh! Oh! Rudy Giuliani! How did I forget him?

Posted by CVille Dem in reply to a comment from Alguien
July 23, 2009 9:35 PM | Reply | Permalink

Well, if you want to look back to the *original* Congressional Page scandal of 1983, there was GOP Rep. Dan Crane...

13. Dan Crane: Republican Congressman. Married, father of six, received a “100% Morality Rating” from Christian Voice. Had sex with a minor working as a US congressional page. On July 20th, the House voted for censure of Crane, the first time that censure had been imposed for sexual misconduct.

Interesting tidbit, former Congressman Henry Hyde pleaded for leniency for Mr. Crane. "Hate the sin, not the sinner" he said.

Posted by Citoyen92 in reply to a comment from Powkat
July 23, 2009 6:03 PM | Reply | Permalink

And also from the 80's, GOP Representative Robert Bauman...

October, 1980, Washington Post

Republican Congressman Robert E. Bauman of Maryland faced with a charge of soliciting sex from a teen-aged boy, has agreed to enter a court-supervised rehabilitation program in the District of Columbia.

snip

The charge follows a Justice Department investigation of allegations that Bauman solicited and then performed oral sodomy on a 16-year-old early this year near Capitol Hill. According to sources, the investigation was prompted by an informant's claim that the congressman was involved in homosexual solicitations of minors.

snip

Bauman's popularity in Maryland and prominence as a persuasive champion of conservatism had reached the level earlier this year that he seriously considered challenging Maryland's incumbent Republican senator, liberal Charles McC. Mathias, in the GOP primary. He was persuaded to drop that idea after several weeks of highly publicized consideration, and devoted his energies instead to serving as vice chairman of the state's delegation at the Republican National Convention and as a leader of the Maryland effort for presidential nominee Ronald Reagan, whom he had strongly supported for years.

Many state Republican leaders considered Bauman a likely candidate for the U.S. Senate two years from now, when Democrat Paul Sarbanes runs for reelection.

The outspoken congressman, who was one of the founders of the 20,000-member American Conservative Union, has made no secret of his ambitions on Capitol Hill. An orphan who was adopted by an insurance salesman, he spent 15 years on the Hill as a page and legislative aide before winning his seat to represent the sprawling 1st District -- which includes 13 of Maryland's 26 counties -- in 1973.

Posted by Citoyen92 in reply to a comment from Citoyen92
July 23, 2009 6:12 PM | Reply | Permalink

And also the story of conservative GOP US Congressman Jon Hinson from Mississippi (who had worked for Senator Thad Cochran and took his seat) who was nearly killed in a tragic gay porno movie theatre fire blocks from the US Capitol in the 70's...

An August 9, 1980 article ("Congressman’s Revelation: Survived Cinema Follies Fire") by Felicty Barringer and Sandra G. Boodman from the Washington Post states:
Rep. Jon Hinson, a conservative Republican from central Mississippi, announced in his Jackson office yesterday that he was one of the survivors of the fatal 1977 fire at Cinema Follies, a Southeast Washington club that catered to homosexuals. Hinson, who did not say he was a homosexual, also revealed that he had voluntarily filed a deposition on behalf of some of the relatives of nine persons killed in the fire. They have filed a $2 million civil damage suit against the club's owner. Hinson also said that he had been "accused" of committing an obscene act in Arlington in September 1976, and as a result had paid a $100 fine for creating a public nuisance. * * * The Cinema Follies fire broke out at 5 p.m. on October 24, 1977, when a spark from a rug shampooer ignited cleaning fluid in the carpet on the first story of the building and flames rushed upstairs to the second floor, where about 13 men were watching X-rated movies. The fire blocked the only exit. All four men were helped out a second-floor window by firemen who had fought through the flames. Hinson, who was an aide to then-representative [Thad] Cochran, was slightly injured, he said yesterday.

Hinson, as Congressman was later arrested for soliciting sex at the Iwo Jima monument in 1981. He resigned thereafter and became a gay rights activist.

Is there something in the water down there in Mississippi?

Posted by Citoyen92 in reply to a comment from Citoyen92
July 24, 2009 12:52 AM | Reply | Permalink

Oh, yeah, Henry Hyde, on the warpath to impeach Clinton for having a consensual affair with a single woman, while he was destroying a family with his affair with a married woman.

Hate the sin AND the sinner.

Posted by JNagarya in reply to a comment from Citoyen92
July 23, 2009 9:08 PM | Reply | Permalink

Don't leave out John McCain -- he left his wife for the heiress! And Saint Ronnie Raygun -- he cheated with Nancy on Jane Wyman.

Keep in mind that these are just the ones we KNOW about! Who is next? And who have we left out?

Make a list of everyone who gets the sweet C Street deal of cheap rent at a place that doesn't have to pay rent because it is a CHURCH?!?!?!??! ....and we'll have more people who are screwing around.

Posted by CVille Dem in reply to a comment from Powkat
July 23, 2009 9:33 PM | Reply | Permalink

I meant they don't have to pay taxes because they are a church. What is the name of said church?

The Church of Poontang?

Posted by CVille Dem in reply to a comment from CVille Dem
July 23, 2009 9:37 PM | Reply | Permalink

... they don't have to pay taxes because they are a church. What is the name of said church?
The Church of Poontang?(/blockquote>

Owned by Youth With a Mission D.C., a 501c3, the C Street house is blessfully subsidized by your tax dollars. It's known colloquially, I believe, like all churches, as Fuck You! It's "free" money, you know.

Posted by tiowally in reply to a comment from CVille Dem
July 24, 2009 2:17 AM | Reply | Permalink

Lest we forget, Florida State Legislator and truckstop bathroom john, Bob Allen (R).

Posted by AdAbsurdum in reply to a comment from Powkat
July 24, 2009 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink

How can you forget Ted Haggard?

Posted by Grog Blossom in reply to a comment from Powkat
July 29, 2009 10:22 AM | Reply | Permalink

@sunnysteve - I was thinking along similar lines - they've probably got his room at C Street already picked out.

Posted by blogenfreude
July 23, 2009 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink

Do we know when Senator Stanley and his intern started seeing each other? That way we'll know whether or not it was President Obama's fault.

Posted by Hussein Stemper
July 23, 2009 6:07 PM | Reply | Permalink

ROTFL! Thank you.

Posted by Captain Scarlet in reply to a comment from Hussein Stemper
July 23, 2009 6:22 PM | Reply | Permalink

It doesn't matter. Sanford's affair was Obama's fault even though it started during the Cheney/Bush regime. Nothing matters, except these repub tenets:

Dishonesty is Truth
Unfaithfulness is Devotion
Nakedness is Unnatural
Abstinence is for Suckers
Health-Care reform is Sick
Cheating is Winning
Winning is Everything
Everything is (for) Republicans
Truth is Inconvenient (see #1)

Posted by CVille Dem in reply to a comment from Hussein Stemper
July 23, 2009 9:45 PM | Reply | Permalink

Below is his contact information if anyone wants to call or write and say hello and then laugh at them.

His staffers must feel so $%#%#$% STUPID.

Yet another full-of-shit Christian . . . caught.

Senator Paul Stanley |11 Legislative Plaza , Nashville, Tennessee 37243
(615) 741-3036 | 800-449-8366 ext. 13036 (Toll-free in Tennessee)
Email: sen.stanley@paulstanley.org

Posted by WestRox
July 23, 2009 6:10 PM | Reply | Permalink

Paul Stanley:
Jesus thinks you're a jerk

Posted by jeffgee
July 23, 2009 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink

Wait a minnit -- wasn't he originally the guitarist for KISS?

Posted by Hussein Stemper
July 23, 2009 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink

Probably. Doesn't look like he has any musical talent.

Posted by JNagarya in reply to a comment from Hussein Stemper
July 23, 2009 9:17 PM | Reply | Permalink

I'm smiling too hard to type.

Posted by barrelhse
July 23, 2009 6:27 PM | Reply | Permalink

No diapers? Not even one wetsuit? No dildo up his ass? No anonymous assignations in a men's room?

This Republican is so vanilla. I don't know what you libruhls are so worked up about.

Posted by rynato
July 23, 2009 6:31 PM | Reply | Permalink

Don't be so quick to rush to judgement, rynato. Wait for news of his curious uses of the Tennessee Smokies souvenir Louisville Slugger to "hit."

Posted by tiowally in reply to a comment from rynato
July 23, 2009 7:01 PM | Reply | Permalink

Why is no one talking about the 22-year-old intern who was sleeping with TWO men?

And married to neither!

Posted by JNagarya in reply to a comment from rynato
July 23, 2009 9:16 PM | Reply | Permalink

Because, unless she also happens to be a theocratic, homophobic, self-parody of a hypocrite who is seeking to rule the lives of others, we are not particularly interested in labeling her a harlot or slut for this conduct.

Of course, it is very likely that she is all of these things -- but the facts aren't yet in.

Posted by Cool Blue Reason in reply to a comment from JNagarya
July 23, 2009 10:20 PM | Reply | Permalink

Because there's nothing wrong with that?

Posted by Kuyleh in reply to a comment from JNagarya
July 23, 2009 11:43 PM | Reply | Permalink

Just what is "wrong" with a single 22 year old woman sleeping, or having sex, with whomever she wants to sleep or have sex with?

Grow up.
.

Posted by Johann in reply to a comment from Kuyleh
July 28, 2009 8:49 AM | Reply | Permalink

I can see a stereotype of the Republican party being created.

Posted by JohnW1141
July 23, 2009 6:49 PM | Reply | Permalink

Rowdy and randy.

Posted by JNagarya in reply to a comment from JohnW1141
July 23, 2009 9:18 PM | Reply | Permalink

At least they've turned the corner and are chasing vagina instead of sweet young boys or rough trade in the airport gents.

One day at a time, Goopers.

Posted by goodken
July 23, 2009 6:54 PM | Reply | Permalink

Oh my...another conservative Christian caught in a sex scandal. I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked.

Posted by Jan Tessier
July 23, 2009 6:55 PM | Reply | Permalink

I'm bored with the repetitive monotony.

Posted by JNagarya in reply to a comment from Jan Tessier
July 23, 2009 9:20 PM | Reply | Permalink

Here is the reality of this class of people:

They know that their followers believe this crap. But they are above it all.

Posted by RWN
July 23, 2009 7:10 PM | Reply | Permalink

I think you nailed it (so to speak)

Posted by adkay in reply to a comment from RWN
July 24, 2009 2:10 PM | Reply | Permalink

Isn't this a federal crime, under the Disabilities Act? Because the intern must have been legally blind to have slept with such an ugly creep. "I'm really handsome, I promise. Now can I touch you in your special Jesus place?"

And now he consults for Allen Stanford, and his current wife's name is "Kristi"? Oh, this isn't gonna end well.

Time for a C-Street make-over!

Posted by Veritas78
July 23, 2009 7:12 PM | Reply | Permalink

When are these guys going to learn? You don't go to the cops to make the story go away because they will arrest the guy blackmailing you, and then the story will come out. Seriously, how many times has this happened now? You'd think the Ensign clan would have started some endowed fund for this kind of thing. I mean, $10K to make the story go away is nothing to them.

Posted by DaveJ
July 23, 2009 7:30 PM | Reply | Permalink

What in the world is wrong with these guys? They are dropping like flies!

Posted by GTFOOH
July 23, 2009 7:40 PM | Reply | Permalink

They're Republicans.

Posted by JNagarya in reply to a comment from GTFOOH
July 23, 2009 9:22 PM | Reply | Permalink

Oh!

Posted by GTFOOH in reply to a comment from JNagarya
July 24, 2009 10:40 AM | Reply | Permalink

Maybe he was just jealous of the OTHER Paul Stanley:
http://tinyurl.com/klgdjc

Posted by phoogoo
July 23, 2009 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink

Note to Mr. Stanley: START BLAMING THE MEDIA FOR THIS. Have you lost your GOP Playbook?

You'll find it in Chapter 2, after the section titled "Pretend to Be a Good Christian to Attract Votes."

Posted by billp
July 23, 2009 7:44 PM | Reply | Permalink

Sorry, billp, but the TPM commentariat already seems to have obtained a lock on the Blame the Media game.

Posted by gharlane in reply to a comment from billp
July 23, 2009 8:14 PM | Reply | Permalink

I think he should go the "I was drunk" route personally. A short stay in rehab and good as new.

Posted by yug doog in reply to a comment from billp
July 23, 2009 10:12 PM | Reply | Permalink

Well, but hey, if he's in The Family, then it's all good. Jesus Plus Nothing. Morality does not apply to them. Jesus wants them in power, and that's all that matters.

Posted by gharlane
July 23, 2009 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink

And more follow-up on The Family from Jeff Sharlet, the guy who quite literally wrote the book on them.

These folks are pretty scary. And Stanley is prime Family material, if he isn't already in.

Posted by gharlane in reply to a comment from gharlane
July 23, 2009 7:50 PM | Reply | Permalink

A few quotes from Sharlet. Read the rest at the links above, or google the guy. He's been on Maddow a few times recently as well.

When I was working on that story, I remember debating how much Hitler we should put in the piece. That is, we wondered how fair it was to dwell on The Family’s invocations of Hitler as a model of “total commitment.” As it turns out, it was quite fair. After I left Ivanwald, a team of researchers and I spent years combing through hundreds of thousands of documents in archives around the country. We discovered that as far back as the 1940s, when The Family began organizing congressmen, the group’s founder, Abraham Vereide, was praising Hitler’s “youth work” as a model to be adopted by Americans. He denounced Hitler himself, but he admired fascism’s cultivation of elites, crucial to what he saw as a God-ordained coming “age of minority control.”
The Family has put that concept, which they call “Jesus plus nothing,” into action for decades, from their early successes fighting the New Deal in the 1930s and 40s to their recruitment of war criminals such as Herman J. Abs, known as “Hitler’s banker,” into postwar European leadership,...

4. What happened to the young men featured in “Jesus Plus Nothing”? In the article, we get the sense that they are being groomed for leadership, both in the Family and in the world.
[...]

Gannon Sims went on to work as a State Department spokesman, and now he’s training for a pulpit. One of the brothers called me after the story appeared in Harper’s. To be honest, I’d hoped that they’d be as dismayed as I was to learn what The Family was really up to, but this brother—who asked that he not be identified—said, “I hope you don’t think I didn’t know all that.” That is, he’d known about The Family’s role in propping up dictators around the world, and he was just fine with it.

[...]

As for myself, I also tell the story of a woman I call “Kate,” who claimed to be a fan. She turned out to be a sister in The Family, this young, good-looking woman who had been sent, she said, by the Coes to “learn my heart.” That was sweeter than the response from former Senator Dan Coats, who as ambassador to Germany killed funds for a speaking gig I had in a series usually paid for by the U.S. embassy. Fortunately, my hosts, the University of Potsdam, made up the difference. They also told me that Coats had declared me “an enemy of Jesus.”

Oh, and why don't we hear more about this?

Given the unbelievable amount of influence brokered by the Fellowship Foundation, and by Doug Coe, why have so few national media outlets have picked up on the story?
The problem is that we just don’t have a press that really wants to challenge power on issues they consider “personal.” Speaking at the 1985 Prayer Breakfast, Ronald Reagan said, “I wish I could say more about it, but it’s working precisely because it’s private.” That should have been an invitation for investigative reporting. Instead, the media, then and now, tends to acquiesce to elite secretiveness, not out of any conspiracy, but due to a culture of reverence for established power, liberal or conservative. Most journalists believe in meritocracy—not merely that it’s a good idea, but that it actually exists. They know some politicians game the system, but they’re committed to the idea that the system basically works. And it does, but not in favor of democracy.

Posted by gharlane in reply to a comment from gharlane
July 23, 2009 8:00 PM | Reply | Permalink

Calling all trolls, calling all trolls. Where are they when you want them?????

Posted by lousgirl84
July 23, 2009 7:53 PM | Reply | Permalink

Love his Web site:
Reliable
Honorable
Conservative.
And that little ladybug on the branch is to die for.

Posted by realist
July 23, 2009 7:59 PM | Reply | Permalink

.....and they Republicans keep pointing the finger at the President and openly lying about his background/religion/birth place. What hypocrites...

Posted by lede3957
July 23, 2009 8:15 PM | Reply | Permalink

Damn those gays for undermining this poor man's marriage!

Posted by The Commenter Formerly Known as NCSteve
July 23, 2009 8:26 PM | Reply | Permalink

I love how I just moved back to Tennessee three months ago... I have arrived in the mental backwater of America!!

Posted by kunda311
July 23, 2009 8:27 PM | Reply | Permalink

You guys are blowing this all out of proportion. We don't even know if the 22-year-old intern was married! Maybe it wasn't premarital sex after all!

Posted by davidotwo
July 23, 2009 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink

You insult the Three Stooges. And I could never stand that Three Stooges.

Posted by JNagarya in reply to a comment from davidotwo
July 23, 2009 9:00 PM | Reply | Permalink

For the second (third?) time: it wasn't premarital for him.

Posted by JNagarya in reply to a comment from davidotwo
July 23, 2009 9:01 PM | Reply | Permalink

Well, it is certainly safe to say it was "non-marital," I mean "Pre-marital" indicates that they are planning to get married - to each other - which is certainly not true.

Posted by CVille Dem in reply to a comment from JNagarya
July 24, 2009 9:18 AM | Reply | Permalink

Perfect timing: When I clicked through to the Memphis CommercialAppeal article, the comments section said "There are 69 responses to this article."

ha!

Posted by TJF
July 23, 2009 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink

You guys have got it all wrong. You're clearly confusing him with this Paul Stanley.

Posted by davidotwo
July 23, 2009 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink

I graduated from high school with this guy in Savannah, TN. His family were democrats, his mother Betty Stanley was chair of the democratic women's group for years. What happened to him? Did he suffer a blow to the head to turn him into this steaming pile of republican hypocrisy? And by the way he sure believed in teen sex outside marriage when he was in high school. Not with me but with any girl that would stand still long enough.

Posted by melindafla
July 23, 2009 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink

More adventures in "real" America.

Posted by Winston Smith
July 23, 2009 8:53 PM | Reply | Permalink

Real America caught in a rut (again).

Posted by JNagarya in reply to a comment from Winston Smith
July 23, 2009 9:25 PM | Reply | Permalink

Look at him, girls. Is that an irrestistable pickup stare, or what?

Ok. My bad......

Posted by sunnysteve
July 23, 2009 9:18 PM | Reply | Permalink

Quick! Interview him on his opinion about Obama's status as an American citizen! Oh! And interview the intern and her boyfriend too. Not about this guy, of course -- just ask them about the birther controversy -- they have as much standing as G Gordon Liddy for christ sake!

Posted by CVille Dem
July 23, 2009 9:28 PM | Reply | Permalink

Just another republican pig. Hypocracy? Just par for the course, becoming so banal that republican is synonomous with hypocrite, also with lying son of a bitch.

Posted by Whenwillthisnightmareend
July 23, 2009 10:26 PM | Reply | Permalink

It gets worser, honey-child.

On April 7th of this year, the folks from Planned Parenthood in Memphis went to see their State Senator Paul Stanley.

Sen. Stanley snubbed them BIG-TIME, and even made a self-righteous, proud point of sayin' that he “didn’t believe young people should have sex before marriage anyway.”

On April 8th Sen. Paul Stanley got an extortion text demandin' $10,000.00.

An' then ol "Oh,-Just-Call-Me-Saint" Paul (age 47) -- who is married with two children -- admitted to law enforcement that he was havin' a "sexual relationship" with a 22-year-old intern.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/jul/23/planned-parenthood-exec-calls-sen-stanley-hypocrit/

By the way, Sen. Stanley's current wife ALSO used to be an intern...

Posted by Rampette
July 23, 2009 10:32 PM | Reply | Permalink

Well its a good thing Democrats never cheat & do not claim to be Christians :)

Posted by kparsons
July 24, 2009 12:27 AM | Reply | Permalink

Democrats don't feel that government should dictate to people who they can sleep with nor preach abstinance as the only acceptable birth control for unweds. It is not the sin, it's the hypocrisy.
And it is possible to be a Christian and not think that our entire country should be forced to adhere to these conservative sects' beliefs.

Posted by Debra
July 24, 2009 1:14 AM | Reply | Permalink

Well most Democrats don't, but there are a fair number of devout Democrats that are willing to impose Christian morality on the populace.

Posted by AJ Simkatu in reply to a comment from Debra
July 26, 2009 3:33 AM | Reply | Permalink

What do you expect? He is a member of the CUM church.

Posted by Bill
July 24, 2009 6:58 AM | Reply | Permalink

The whole story reminds me of a "Perry Mason" plot circa 1959. How about "The Case of the Conservative Concubine"? Paging Lieutenant Tragg!

Posted by Virginia
July 24, 2009 8:33 AM | Reply | Permalink

Republican Congressman:

Hi, I'm from the Government and I'm here to help, er, screw you (literally)

Posted by JohnW1141
July 24, 2009 9:08 AM | Reply | Permalink

I'm sure this will bring his family closer together and closer to their God.

Posted by Winston Smith
July 24, 2009 9:28 AM | Reply | Permalink

Gratuitous and unnecessary:

"(Check out the religious imagery on the site -- the sun poking through clouds, as if manifesting God's presence -- which of course shows Stanley's deeply pious nature.)"

That's nooz lite, not news -- and it's not even good commentary.

Notwhithstanding, the dude certainly is a complete hypocrite.

Posted by by foot
July 24, 2009 10:36 AM | Reply | Permalink

“OK, Just for the sake of argument lets say there are photos of a Stanley affair and it was all true. (I have no knowledge of that one way or the other) Is that illegal? No. While unseemly, he has not broken any legal law. To his credit he went above what many would do and called the cops when being shaken down. I am sure he knew when he did, that it would come out and it would not be pretty. He stood up to the blackmailer and did the right thing anyway. A lesser person would have caved, given the money and hoped it never came out.” - Rep. Stacey Campfield

Unbelievable. Stanley breaks his marriage vows and reveals himself as a breathtaking moral hypocrite, and Rep. Campfield is complimenting him on his behavior because he wouldn't allow himself to be blackmailed?

I expect that if Stanley robbed a bank, hid the cash for months and then surrendered when police surrounded his house, Campfield would praise him for not resisting arrest.

Posted by billp
July 24, 2009 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink

Actually, Campfield should know that adultery is illegal in Tennessee and the Republican state senator has now admitted that he is a criminal violator of the Tennessee adultery statutes.

Although it's not real clear if any of the adultery statutes are worth the paper they are printed on since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Lawrence v. Texas.

And again, most people could care less that he is banging his secretary. The problem is that he purports to be a good Christian man that is in favor of laws that only allow the Christian idea of love to be recognized, while he is screwing a 22-year-old woman not his wife.

It's hypocritical to be making Christian laws and Christian policies that you expect your constituents to follow, while you stink your penis in everything that moves.

Posted by AJ Simkatu in reply to a comment from billp
July 26, 2009 3:30 AM | Reply | Permalink

I think what we are seeing is the Republican Party achieving the Karl Rove dream: a permanent majority -- but only on the zany political sex scandal scoreboard. Their run has got to end soon. I keep on expecting to read about some new Democratic scandal. But the Repubs are doing such a fine job running up the score right now, I don't think it is possible for the Dems to ever make up the deficit.

Posted by codem
July 24, 2009 3:28 PM | Reply | Permalink

If Paul Stanley and his ilk want to keep their kids ignorant about sex, insisting that "sex ed" consist only of propaganda about "abstinence" I can teach my own kids what they have to know. Problems is, the results of "abstinence only" propaganda are in: a drastic increase in gonorrhea and syphilis among teenagers,plus a doubling in AIDS cases among teenage boys. Parents aren't doing their jobs, and their kids are getting seriously ill with STDs.
See, link below: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2009/07/21/all-children-left-behind/
The lesson: hypocrisy kills.

Posted by Icarus
July 24, 2009 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink

He says abstinence before marriage. I guess he means that after you are married you can do it with anyone you like? You have to give him credit for consistency.

Posted by FDRdog
July 26, 2009 10:27 AM | Reply | Permalink

Zach:

You say: "Check out the religious imagery on the site -- the sun poking through clouds, as if manifesting God's presence ..."

I say: No need to slam the imagery on the web site of the Christ United Methodist Church in order to make your point. Lots of religions deal with imagery. To each his/her own images.

Posted by elvilco
July 29, 2009 12:07 AM | Reply | Permalink

Maybe these religious nut-jobs are on to something? I mean seriously, it seems like you can get away with whatever you want, but as long as you claim that jesom crowe is your lord and savior, thou shalt be forgiven.

What a bunch of hypocritical, lying, pseudo-pious fools.

Posted by martin dreadnought
July 29, 2009 9:09 AM | Reply | Permalink