They Don’t Embarrass Easy

You probably remember Katie Hill, the Democratic Congresswoman from California. Hill and her husband were swingers. Among other things, they went on a swingers’ cruise. In connection with that venture, Katie placed an ad in a swingers’ magazine in which she used the name “Angelbutt 123.” She and her husband then became entangled in a “throuple” with a young woman on Katie’s staff. That implicated workplace concerns, and was too much for Nancy Pelosi, who forced Hill out of Congress.

I am reminded of the Katie Hill saga by this story: “Democratic Virginia House candidate performed sex acts with husband on webcam for ‘tips’.”

A Democratic candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates performed sex acts with her husband online — and asked her virtual audience to pitch in with “tips,” The Post has learned.

Susanna Gibson, a mother of two young children who is running in a competitive race to represent District 57 in Richmond, showed quite a bit more than skin on the adult streaming website Chaturbate, according to screenshots of archived material reviewed by The Post.

The 40-year-old nurse practitioner hosted more than a dozen of the live romps with her husband on the platform, which was then posted to a publicly accessible archive on the website Recurbate in September 2022 after she declared her candidacy….

The unconventional candidate had more than 5,770 Chaturbate followers, whom she repeatedly pressed for more “tokens” in exchange for certain acts in “private” showings — adding that she was “raising money for a good cause.”

In other videos, she suggested that she and her husband have “tried swapping” with different partners as she is “ethically non-monogamous,” but that he “doesn’t like sharing.”

Does performing online sex acts for “tips” disqualify a candidate from serious consideration for the Virginia House? I guess we will find out. Ms. Gibson has responded aggressively to the revelations:

In a statement to the Washington Post, Gibson called the publicly posted videos “an illegal invasion of my privacy designed to humiliate me and my family.

“It won’t intimidate me and it won’t silence me,” Gibson said. “My political opponents and their Republican allies have proven they’re willing to commit a sex crime to attack me and my family because there’s no line they won’t cross to silence women when they speak up.”

So the invasion of privacy wasn’t when Gibson posted videos of the sex acts, it was when someone thought voters might want to know about it. And the feminist angle is precious: “There’s no line they won’t cross to silence women when they speak up.” But Gibson wasn’t exactly speaking up, except to the extent she asked for tips.

Her lawyer says he is pursuing legal action:

“We are working closely with state and federal law enforcement,” Watkins also said.

Candidate Gibson is betting that no one except Republicans will mind a would-be legislator performing online sex acts for money. She could be right. For now, her party is standing behind her:

A top-ranking Virginia Democrat immediately came to Gibson’s defense after the videos were reported by the Post. “Now we are going to make this the biggest fundraising day of her campaign,” Sen. L. Louise Lucas said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

I am not sure that, if she had stayed clear of her own staff, Katie Hill’s swinger identity as Angelbutt 123 would have been enough to derail her political career. Hill, like Gibson, went on the offensive after resigning from Congress, attributing her downfall to “misogyny.”

So, stay tuned to the race in Virginia’s House District 57. The result there could tell us something about the current state of American culture.

STEVE adds: Why does John always scoop me on the best news stories? But he missed the five-dimensional chess at work here: Gibson is just trying the latest Democratic strategy to appeal to swing voters.