The Senate sex tape is also textbook sexual harassment — by the participants
Tiana Lowe Doescher
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It turns out that the taxpayers aren’t the only people getting screwed in the storied halls of the Senate. In the scandal that everyone in the Beltway can’t shut up about, the now-infamous Senate staffer who filmed a sex tape in a hearing room in the Hart Senate Office Building is insisting that he is the real victim.
“This has been a difficult time for me, as I have been attacked for who I love to pursue a political agenda,” wrote Aidan Maese-Czeropski, who was fired from the office of Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) after the Daily Caller posted the sex tape in question. “While some of my actions in the past have shown poor [judgment], I love my job and would never disrespect my workplace. Any attempts to characterize my actions otherwise are fabricated and I will be exploring what legal options are available to me in these matters.”
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In case you’ve been mercifully out of the loop since last weekend, let us provide a recap. Maese-Czeropski brought a paramour to a Senate hearing room he reportedly booked under his boss’s name. He then filmed a video of himself having sex and then posted it in a social media group of fellow gay Hill staffers. Somebody leaked it to the Daily Caller, and contrary to Maese-Czeropski, who is painting himself as the victim, Cardin’s office is collaborating with the feds as they investigate whether the newfound adult film star broke any laws in the process of his motion picture.
Maese-Czeropski is not being “attacked” for his sexuality, and his concession that he has demonstrated poor judgment belies his assertion that he “would never disrespect” his workplace. But for the morally degenerate members of Generation Z who still don’t understand why it’s an insult to the taxpayers to use the literal People’s House to produce a porno film, perhaps let’s put the ethics in a lens young people are supposed to understand even better than boomers: consent.
The Capitol is the government seat of the free world, but it’s also, at its core, a workplace, and a hearing room is perhaps the most public co-working space of them all. Filming yourself having anal sex in a shared workspace is about as textbook a case of workplace sexual harassment as they come. Even with a Weinstein-esque quid pro quo or act of physical aggression, a public display of sex at work constitutes creating a hostile work environment, a subtype of sexual harassment.
“I refer to the U.S. Capitol as a sacred space because it’s so much more than a building where the Senate and the House of Representatives meet and conduct business,” Cardin said after Jan. 6. “It is the embodiment of our ideals, our aspirations, and hope — not just to Americans, but also to all of humanity.”
That’s true, but the Capitol is also simply where lawmakers and staffers “meet and conduct business.” That’s no less important, and its people are no less entitled to feel offended by Maese-Czeropski than the taxpayers.