Representative Lauren Boebert (R., Colo.) and her date groped each other in a packed theater in Denver last week, while the congresswoman ripped a vape. So, that happened.
Video footage shows Boebert at the musical Beetlejuice grabbing her date’s crotch as he gropes her breasts. They were surrounded by other audience members, including a pregnant woman who at one point during the show asked Boebert to stop vaping. Boebert refused and was kicked out of the theater.
“The past few days have been difficult and humbling, and I’m truly sorry for the unwanted attention my Sunday evening in Denver has brought to the community,” Boebert said in a statement on Friday. “While none of my actions or words as a private citizen that night were intended to be malicious or meant to cause harm, the reality is they did and I regret that.”
Boebert isn’t the only female politician to raise eyebrows lately. An alleged affair between married South Dakota governor Kristi Noem and former Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski has surfaced. And it was revealed that Susanna Gibson, a candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates, and her husband engaged in live-streamed sex for tips — behavior she defended.
Just a few years ago, Boebert’s behavior would have prompted calls for her resignation, and Gibson would have been expected to withdraw from her race. Granted, the bar for sexual morality in Washington, D.C., has always been low, but it plummeted further once Republicans accepted and defended Donald Trump’s decades-long record of vulgar and immoral behavior. Trump is now well insulated from being reproached. (Not even cheating on his postpartum wife with a porn star made a dent among his supporters.) It looks like Republicans will take the same lukewarm stance on sexual morality when it comes to Boebert.
Although the Texas Youth Summit removed Boebert from its upcoming event, after first describing the representative as “a devout Christian who seeks to honor God in all that she does,” it did so quietly, with no mention as to why. Some Republicans have made a joke out of Boebert’s actions, and media outlets are focusing more on Boebert’s vape habit than what they call her “intimate” public behavior.
Sexual immorality isn’t news. More noteworthy is the frequency with which public officials display it, and the fact that so many of their partisan supporters defend it. What does Boebert’s behavior say about her stance on family values now?
Boebert has blasted drag shows for “sexualizing public spaces,” yet kids as young as ten could have been in the audience with her last week. Quinn Gallagher, her date, even owns a bar that hosts drag performances. No matter whom she was with, though, that a politician couldn’t restrain herself in public for a couple of hours is an embarrassment. It’s more embarrassing that Republicans won’t condemn such acts.