Tennessee State Senator Wins GOP Hypocrite Award for Allegedly Making Porn With Intern While Trumpeting Family Values

Paul Stanley

With the veritable plethora of Republican hypocrites available to us on the national stage, we rarely have time to look through local reports for small-time bad actors.

However, in the case of Tennessee state Sen. Paul Stanley, the story was just too good to pass up. The 47-year-old Republican chairman of the Tennessee Senate Commerce Committee and representative of Germantown is well-known in the state for his strong family values stance. And where there's blustering over family values, there's usually hypocrisy.

News of a sting operation this past April was somehow kept quiet until this week, when Tennessee learned that Stanley had been the victim of an attempted blackmail after evidence of a sexual relationship with one of his interns was used to try to extort $10,000 from the senator.

McKensie Morrison, referred to as 22 and 23 years old in different local news accounts, is a student and legislative intern in Stanley's office for the 2009 season. Her boyfriend, Joel Watts, told authorities he discovered a computer memory disc with explicit photos of Morrison that appeared to be taken in Stanley's apartment (how Watts knew Stanley was sexually involved with Morrison and/or what the senator's apartment looks like is as yet unexplained).

Watts contacted the senator to get the payment in exchange for the disc and his silence. Stanley -- who is married with two children -- then contacted the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations, which set up the sting that resulted in Watts' arrest.

"There is nothing more that I wanted to do than to expose this person for what he was," Watts told local news media.

It's unfortunate that Watts felt the need to make a quick buck out of the supposed intent to expose (though he tells local media that the charges result from a tragic misunderstanding), but we can still take a lead from his stated desire to call out Stanley's duplicity.

Criminal investigations aside, it may be the case that Stanley himself violated the law by having intimate relations with an intern. As this local blogger points out, Stanley may have committed a Class C felony under Tennessee state law if Morrison felt pressured to be involved with the senator in order to maintain her position in his office.

Still, in his only public statement on the matter, he refers to himself as a "victim and a witness to a crime." While there are many unanswered questions about the as-yet-unreleased pictures, as well as over Stanley's culpability, the affidavit does clearly state that "Morrison was engaged in a sexual relationship with Paul Stanley."

Much has been made of the legislation Stanley sponsored that would prohibit gay people from adopting. But a closer look at the language of the bill (relegated to committee) reveals that, under the bill "any individual who is living with another person and is involved in a sexual relationship with that person ("cohabitating") outside of a marriage that is valid under the constitution would not be allowed to adopt a minor child." The bill explicitly states that "it would apply to cohabitating opposite-sex and same-sex individuals."

See? Stanley's not a homophobic bigot; he's just a hypocrite! Eh, on closer examination it seems he's both; the two often go hand in hand. Turns out, he did insist that his own relationship (with his wife, that is) was way more legitimate than gay peoples', since "when you're married, there's a commitment there." A commitment to what, one might ask...

And while Stanley seems to think it's OK to make porn in the privacy of one's own apartment, as a representative, he introduced a bill that would have "prohibited the showing of pornographic materials in a moving vehicle." Because swiftly moving smut is the beginning of the end of civilized society, just like gays adopting orphaned Tennesseans.

Stanley has no qualms with mixing moral superiority with government. Under the "personal information" section of his senate Web site, Stanley proudly lists "Evangelical Christian" and notes his service on the administrative board of Christ United Methodist Church below that.

While much attention has already been given to his moral authority on adoption and highway porn, God and sex are all over Stanley's legislative activity this season.

He apparently thinks it's important for Tennesseans to be able to trumpet their trust in God on their license plates without incurring extra fees at the Godless Department of Motor Vehicles. He felt he had the authority to amend the state law regarding Tennessee strip clubs and "adult cabarets" down to the dirty details of what employees are allowed to do in such an establishment. He also sought to change the way vandalism is penalized when pertaining to a house of worship and introduced a bill restricting the computer use of sexual offenders.

On Wednesday, Stanley resigned from his position as Commerce chairman, but showed no signs of giving up his senate seat. And why should he, when fellow GOP hypocrites such as Gov. Mark Sanford and Sen. John Ensign serve with such distinction? Stanley will probably ride this one out like the rest of them, which is why he's BuzzFlash's GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

Remember our motto: So many Republican hypocrites, so little time.

Catch up with you soon.

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This is Paul Stanley's first GOP Hypocrite of the Week Award. Welcome to the club. You can see a list of all previous nominees here.