Politics

Swalwell and Gonzales: The High Cost of Sexual Sin in Positions of Power

News this week of the high-profile resignations of Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) is quintessential “tabloid fodder” — scandalous and sensational stories that make headlines and simultaneously intrigue and disgust.

While both situations are somewhat unique, their luridness is not — powerful politicians betraying the public trust on numerous levels. In recent history, you may recall the names of other representatives such as Anthony Weiner, Katie Hill, Tim Murphy, and Mark Foley. It was in 2018 when Senator Al Franken resigned following accusations of sexual harassment. All of them departed Washington under clouds of suspicion and in disgrace.

Rep. Swalwell announced his resignation and suspended his campaign for governor of California following multiple allegations of sexual abuse.

Rep. Gonzales admitted to an extra-marital affair with a staffer who later died by suicide.

Sexual sin is not limited to Washington, D.C., of course, nor is it a recent phenomenon in history. The Bible warns about sexual sin numerous times, both directly and indirectly. From warnings in the Old Testament to not commit adultery (Exodus 20:14) to the Apostle Paul urging believers to “flee from sexual immorality” (1 Cor. 6:18), it’s obvious that sexual temptation is ever present.

In recent decades, Christian social conservatives have often been mocked for promoting and defending a biblical sexual ethic. In the past, entire social media platforms have even labeled Christians who opposed same-sex marriage as regressive bigots. Shows like Saturday Night Live have portrayed Christians who adhere to a strict sexual code of conduct as intolerant and out of touch. For decades, virgins have been lampooned.

Former Vice President Mike Pence has long been criticized for his practice of not eating or meeting alone in a room with a woman without another person present. After he discussed his prayer life and said that the Lord talks with him, “The View’s” Joy Behar derided and ridiculed him.

“It’s one thing to talk to Jesus,” she said. “It’s another thing when Jesus talks to you. That’s called mental illness, if I’m not correct — hearing voices. My question is, can he talk to Mary Magdalene without his wife in the room?” 

She later apologized, but only after being heavily criticized. In essence, Behar was labeling those who take God’s Word and promises seriously as being mentally ill. 

It’s one thing to disobey God’s laws and commandments regarding human sexuality, but to openly and enthusiastically criticize them belies a fundamental and foundational fact:

They work.

Not to reduce God’s laws and guidance to a prescription or a simple formula to follow, they’re nevertheless deeply practical and wildly effective. God doesn’t forbid extramarital sex to be a killjoy, but in part because He knows it will ultimately kill and destroy those who embrace it.

The late Dr. Vernon Grounds, who served as president of Denver Seminary, once rightly observed, “A source of the intensest pleasure earthlings can experience, sex has also been a source of vexatious trouble for the human family since the beginning of history.”

Representatives Swalwell and Gonzales reflect this reality, but the lessons about the liberation that comes from fleeing from sexual sin are available to anyone and everyone long before it’s too late to do something about it.

Fleeing from sexual sin won’t necessarily make you a successful congressman, but it will protect your marriage and allow you to live free of guilt and shame. 

Because of a fallen humanity, Washington, D.C. will never be a perfect environment. But if our representatives would all adhere to a biblical sexual ethic, it would certainly be a lot less dysfunctional than it currently is. 

Wrote the psalmist, “The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul” (19:7). The Swamp is in desperate need of Christian revival.

Families Are Moving to a Better Life … in Red States

Across the country, families are packing up their beloved and settled homes and starting a new life elsewhere. What’s motivating them to go to so much trouble?

The data show it’s politics and beliefs. They are leaving blue states for red states. And married couples are also more likely to start their families with babies in red states.

This is the finding of the 2026 Family Structure Index created jointly by Ohio’s Center for Christian Virtue and the Institute for Family Studies (IFS). They report, “From 2019 to 2024, there has been a steady exodus of families from Blue to Red America – 370,000 families from blue to red states.” In fact, 713,000 married families with children have packed up fromblue states and headed for red since 2008. With numbers like this, it’s likely you know such a family.

That is quite a dramatic national shift and others have noted it previously.

States like Florida, Texas, Utah, Idaho and South Carolina are benefiting from this trend. Husbands and wives are making this move because these states have resisted following crazy policy decisions favored by left-leaning politicians and voters relative to education, sexuality, immigration and economic policy. Affordable housing is another big factor. 

As Aaron Baer and Brad Wilcox, the primary principals of this study explain, “In many blue states, especially on the coasts, restrictive zoning and high costs have pushed homeownership out of reach for young families.” They add, “In much of red America, that dream remains attainable.”

Tax policy has also motivated these blue-to-red migrations. Baer and Wilcox observe, “Lower tax burdens in many red states leave families with more room in their budgets, whether for childcare, a good private school or saving for the future.”

The problem with blue-run cities has gotten so bad even liberal New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof admitted the problem in 2024, reporting “the bluest parts of the country – cities on the West Coast – are a mess.” But of course, it is more than just the West Coast. Our state of Colorado, where Focus on the Family and its employees live, seems to be working overtime to run off reasonable people, as The Babylon Bee recently noted.

But it is not only that strong conservative families are moving into red states. More conservative states are home-growing more families. Red states have been shown to be notably more fertile than blue states. 

The Institute for Family Studies finds, “From 2019 to 2024, red states saw the share of prime-age adults who are married rise 1.8 percentage points and the share of teens in married-parent families rise 0.2 points; blue states saw both figures fall.”

IFS demonstrates these red/blue differentials here:

Yes, fertility has dropped for both, but it has declined much more starkly among blue states.

Baer and Wilcox conclude,

The Great American Family Sort is more than a demographic shift. It is a signal. Families are making their priorities clear through where they choose to live and have children. The question is whether the rest of the country is paying attention.

They should. As IFS observes, “Americans who put family first are increasingly making their home in Red America.” People are paying attention to what various states are doing with their public policy and voting with their feet … and their moving vans.

The Clash and Tension Between Public Service & Party Platform

It’s not all that unusual for a politician to not run for re-election, but Michigan State Representative Karen Whitsett’s reason to stand down this next cycle is raising some eyebrows and garnering national attention.

“I will not be seeking re-election for this office, and I will not be running for any office ever again,” she stated on Monday. “This is not a political calculation—it’s a spiritual decision.”

As a committed believer in Jesus Christ, Rep. Whitsett has said she’s found ongoing political differences in her orbit to be irreconcilable with her faith.

“I don’t have a heaven or hell to put anyone in. Only God does. But I do have God’s unwavering Word to stand on, and I can no longer compromise it to fit a party platform or to please people,” Whitsett said.

She continued:

“I have compromised my relationship with Jesus for too long, and I’m grateful God did not give up on me. He gave me time to repent, turn, and be fully devoted to Him,” the Michigan representative declared.

“That conviction includes the issues I cannot reconcile with Scripture: abortion, the normalization of the gay lifestyle, and the push to redefine gender.”

A native of Detroit, Rep. Whitsett has said she was motivated to run for office in order to help improve the lives of her constituents.

Christians have traditionally made for ideal public officials. Scripture is clear that government is established by God (Romans 13:1) and that He raises up individuals who are “ministers of God” (Romans 13:6). Christians who know His Word also recognize that ultimately, “there is no authority except from God” (Romans 13:1).

Faith and politics isn’t a zero-sum game, of course. Many elected officials at odds with their party’s platform have simply switched parties.

William Wilberforce, the British politician credited with abolishing the Atlantic slave trade, was said to have seriously considered resigning his seat in Parliament after converting to Christianity. Like Rep. Whitsett, he struggled with whether he could remain faithful to both the Bible and his office.

John Newton, who had previously been a slave trader before converting and becoming a pastor, wrote to the British politico and urged him to stay.

“It is hoped and believed that the Lord has raised you up for the good of His church and for the good of the nation,” he advised. “The Lord has a work for you to do … and you are not to leave it.”

That turned out to be good advice given William Wilberforce helped abolish slavery in the British Empire.

Not everybody, though, hangs around and tries to reconcile their frustrations. The late Dr. Tom Coburn, who also served in the Senate, and was known for his strong Christian faith, resigned his seat early. While citing an ongoing battle with cancer, he also expressed irritation with the perennial dysfunction in politics. 

“When I came to Washington, I was troubled to observe so many similarities between the behaviors of drug-addicted patients and my political colleagues,” he quipped. “In Washington power is like morphine.”

During her four terms in office, Rep. Whitsett has prioritized lowering insurance rates for constituents, reforming the tax foreclosure procedures and helping entrepreneurs secure loans and resources for their businesses. 

In announcing her plans to step away from the political sphere, the Michigan legislator spoke freely and clearly:

“I’m not going to pretend God’s Word can be twisted by any priest, bishop, pastor, or preacher to make people feel comfortable in sin—whether that’s to keep donations coming, to avoid offending anyone, or to fit the culture,” Whitsett said.

“Just because prominent leaders don’t speak against these things does not mean God is okay with them. God does not change. My faith is not moving. My allegiance is to Jesus Christ, and I’m choosing God’s business over man’s approval.”

The Most Republican or Democrat-Leaning Jobs in America?

What jobs in America are most likely filled by Republicans or Democrats? Does such data even exist?

It didn’t, until now. And the findings are very interesting.

Ryan Burge, a Washington University professor at the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, explains a small team of researchers at a firm called Politics at Work have done a “really good” job at providing data revealing which professions tend to attract more Republicans or Democrats.

The main headline for Professor Burge is that the top line of work for Republicans is within religious organizations, and more specifically, non-denominational Christian ones. Generally, he finds, “people who worked for religious organizations are clearly the only group to the right of center” where “Republicans outnumbered Democrats by seven percentage points.” This is not surprising, given that Democrats have been growing more secular compared to Republicans over the last few decades.

But what does it mean to work in a “religious organization”? That could be almost anything: a Catholic hospital, a Muslim or Jewish organization, an historic religiously based university, or a local rescue mission or food pantry.

Burge found that Christian-based workplaces were dramatically more likely to lean Right or Republican over and against either Muslim or Jewish employers. The differentials look like this:

Burge also shows which Christian denominations lean more conservative politically. He explains, “Folks who work for Baptist and non-denominational churches are the most right-leaning, followed by Pentecostals and Lutherans,” adding, “In each case, the Republican share outnumbers the Democratic share.” Non-denominational organization employees clearly lean markedly more conservative in their politics.

His data shows that those Chrisitan employers leaning most Left are Episcopalians, Adventists and Methodists. The next closest competitors after religious organizations for most Republican-filled jobs are commercial construction and real estate appraisers, followed by insurance brokers and real estate agents.

On the Democrat-leaning employment side, Burge asks, “Is anyone shocked that people who work in higher education are 32 percentage points more Democratic than Republican?” He says the next most liberal work sectors are law offices in second and software engineers in third place. Internet services, clothing retail, media and streaming and fast-food restaurants were the other top Left-leaning job sites. Burge explains these “results align really well” with recent voting trend data for these groups.

Folks who work in aerospace manufacturing, car dealerships, insurance brokerages, engineering and the mortgage industry are the most evenly split workplaces.

These findings are not surprising as we consider that people are motivated by their core beliefs and those beliefs certainly follow us into the workplace. Biblical faith informs us in certain directions, with important beliefs and practices, standing for divinely inspired truths. These truths have political consequences – for what it means to be human as male and female, for what freedom and civic responsibility mean, for economics, national security, and the importance of the natural family – and they tend to line up with one party over the other. This is what the data presented in Professor Burge’s findings show.

Ideas have consequences.

Additional Resources

One Political Party is Clearly More Proud of America Than the Other

Data Shows Democrats Are Increasingly Secular

Research Finds Republican Husbands More Faithful; Religious Even More

The Church’s Lane is the Whole Cosmos

Marriage and Parenting Are Now Partisan Issues, With Liberals Falling Behind

Few things are more natural than marriage and starting a family. In the very first chapter of his sweeping three-volume study on the history of marriage, ground-breaking anthropologist Edward Westermarck explains, “As for the origin of the institution of marriage, I consider it probable that it has developed out of a primeval habit.”

Our current political debate on how the institutions of marriage and family lift children, women, men and their communities to a better life did not start with conservative Republicans. It started in 1965 with Democrats in the Johnson Administration, sparked by an important government research document known as The Moynihan Report.

But the prevalence of marriage, childbearing and parenting has increasingly become divided among Red/Blue lines in America, with liberals lagging far behind conservatives. This is happening by dramatic margins according to scholars at the Institute for Family Studies (IFS). They contend that “Since the 1980s, marriage rates have declined for both conservatives and liberals. But the declines have been greater among liberals, for both men and women.” Regarding fertility and parenthood, “In the last decade, a chasm has opened up between conservative and liberal young men and women in the share who have had children.”

They explain we’re now “witnessing the real-world consequences of an ideological divide where the Right prioritizes marriage and childbearing and the Left discounts them in fertility and population shifts across America.”

Gallup research noted the same trend in 2024.

University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox demonstrates this in an illuminating X thread:

Professor Wilcox explains, “The Left has a family problem,” adding, “Progressive messaging that devalues, denies and deconstructs the value of family life and celebrates solo living in recent years is leaving its mark on the hearts, minds, and lives of young liberals, especially young women on the Left.”

While marriage is declining among all sociodemographic groups, it is steeper among liberal men and women compared to their more conservative peers.

Childbearing and parenthood are notably higher among conservative men and women, and the gap, in contrast to liberals, is clearly widening.

IFS’ scholars explain, “Indeed, in the 2020s, a majority of conservative young adults ages 25-35 have married and become parents, whereas only a minority of liberal young adults have done likewise.” Philosophy professor Anastasia Berg, a self-described liberal, wrote last fall in The New York Times, “This situation is exacerbated by a political climate in which having children becomes increasingly coded as conservative and reactionary. So people are finding themselves paralyzed by indecision. That, for me, is the problem.” She adds, “In all these aspects of their lives, young liberal progressives especially seek fulfillment, satisfaction and success before they feel ready to start thinking about children.”

This fact has had real-world implications with Red voting states having dramatically higher fertility rates than Blue voting states. That divide has become dramatic:

Remarkably, young women have been trending more liberal in their convictions over the last few decades. The Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute explains, “Young women stand out for their support for changing social norms in American society, including more women serving in the military, more children having gay or lesbian parents, and more men staying home with children.”

IFS’ scholars explain,

We attribute this divide in large part to how mainstream institutions in education, media, and pop culture have advanced a Midas Mindset that prioritizes an individualistic ethos focused on personal development, hedonism, and, especially, career. This mindset has led many young adults on the Left to postpone or forego family life.

Ideas and the things we believe have very big consequences, as Richard Weaver famously put it. Our convictions translate into actions that either make the world a better or worse place. And research is very clear, more marriage and children make the world a much better place.

Related Articles and Resources

Research Finds Republican Husbands More Faithful; Religious Even More

Liberal Women are Sadder Than Conservatives: Less Faith, Fewer Marriages?

Red States are More Fertile than Blue. Here’s Why it Matters.

New Research: Marriage Still Provides Major Happiness Premium

Marriage and Family Improves Happiness Far More Than a Pay Raise

Married Mothers and Fathers Are Happiest According to Gold-Standard General Social Survey

MythBuster: No, the Divorce Rate is Not as High in the Church as the World

Why Marriage Matters for Adults

What is Happening with Marriage Today? Some Good News, But Mostly Bad