JT Santana | jtwb768

Chris Gallant’s leather photos are real. So is Congress’s very long history of adults having sex, sexting, having affairs, taking nude photographs, getting handsy at Beetlejuice, and occasionally creating situations far more serious than wearing a harness.

Apparently we have reached another milestone in American democracy: a congressional candidate had sex before running for Congress.

I realize this may come as a profound shock to anyone who believed candidates for federal office were assembled in a warehouse outside Washington, issued a flag pin, given three approved facial expressions, and forbidden from experiencing sexual desire until retirement. Yet Democratic congressional candidate Chris Gallant had a private life long before anybody printed his name on a ballot. Some of that private life included leather, bondage gear, a boyfriend, photographs, and enough exposed abdominal muscle to create an unexpected crisis for opposition researchers.

Gallant, 37, is the Democratic nominee challenging Republican Rep. Nick LaLota in New York’s 1st Congressional District. His biography includes service in the New York Army National Guard since 2006, flying Black Hawk helicopters, overseas deployments, work as an FAA air traffic controller, union leadership with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, and volunteer firefighting. He is openly gay and says he has been open about his sexuality during his military career since shortly after the end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” 

Then somebody found the photographs.

The New York Post reported that Gallant had modeled fetish gear for San Francisco’s Mr. S Leather years earlier. Gallant’s attorney, Sara Azari, confirmed that photographs from the Mr. S shoot were authentic and said they came from a consensual session involving Gallant and his then-partner, with whom he had a four-year relationship. She said Gallant was friends with the business owner and knew selected photographs could be used in connection with particular products. 

And America was once again confronted with one of its most persistent political emergencies:

Sex exists.

Worse, politicians have apparently heard about it.

Leather, Helicopters, and the National Emergency Nobody Ordered

Gallant did not deny the photographs, claim artificial intelligence created them, blame Russian hackers, announce that an evil identical twin had escaped from a laboratory, or suddenly discover amnesia. His initial message was considerably simpler: “I’m not embarrassed or ashamed — I have always been unapologetically me.” He later said he was proud of who he was, would not be shamed into silence, and would not permit his private life to be weaponized against him. 

He followed that with a line destined for the congressional-candidate-response hall of fame: “I wasn’t scared flying Black Hawk helicopters in the Middle East. And I sure as hell won’t let some pictures from my past scare me.” That is an unusually difficult sentence to answer with, “Yes, but have you considered the dangerous national-security implications of looking fantastic in a harness?” 

For accuracy, one correction from the earliest social-media versions of this story is necessary. The familiar photograph showing a much younger Gallant wearing a leather harness with a bright blue Avatar: The Last Airbender-style arrow on his head appears to come from the 2007 Invasion of the Pines on Fire Island, not the later Mr. S Leather session. Archived Mr. S images connected with Gallant appeared online beginning around 2011, and Gallant’s attorney has described the photo session as occurring roughly around 2010. 

That distinction changes virtually nothing about the moral panic, but facts are facts. One cannot spend years demanding accuracy from politicians and then move a leather harness three years through time merely for comedic efficiency.

There is another delicious historical detail here. Mr. S Leather was founded in San Francisco in 1979 and has operated in SoMa for decades, serving the leather, kink, and fetish communities. San Francisco’s official historical documentation describes the store as a longtime manufacturer and retailer of leather, fetish, bondage, and related goods. 

C-SPAN launched in 1979, too. 

Yes, America received Mr. S Leather and televised congressional proceedings in the same year. One gave us leather restraints and collars. The other gave us seven-hour committee hearings.

I refuse to decide which required greater endurance.

Congress Has Never Been a Monastery

The funniest part of treating Gallant’s old photographs as evidence of some unprecedented collision between sexuality and Congress is the implication that Capitol Hill has previously been staffed by 535 virginal policy monks.

It has not.

Members of Congress date. Members of Congress marry. They divorce. They remarry. They have affairs. They send texts they later regret. They take photographs. They flirt. They get caught. They deny things that cameras have recorded from three angles. They occasionally discover, much too late, that the phrase “private message” contains a dangerously optimistic adjective.

This is not an argument that every sexual episode involving a public official deserves the same treatment. Quite the opposite. The history of congressional sex stories shows exactly why the distinction between private consensual conduct and conduct involving deception, coercion, subordinates, misuse of office, harassment, unlawful acts, or other people’s rights needs to remain visible.

Consider former Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas.

In 2017, a nude photograph Barton had sent privately surfaced online. Barton confirmed that the photograph was his and said that, during a period when he was separated from his second wife, he had consensual sexual relationships with adult women. He apologized for his judgment, and Capitol Police offered to investigate the publication of the image amid questions about whether he had been subjected to nonconsensual pornography. 

Pause there.

A Republican congressman had consensual adult relationships and sent a nude picture.

America continued.

The Capitol dome did not crack.

The National Archives did not burst into flames.

George Washington did not climb down from Mount Rushmore, partly since George Washington is not on Mount Rushmore.

That last fact has saved me from at least three angry history professors.

Barton’s story illustrates something useful. A politician can make sexual choices that people find embarrassing, foolish, unappealing, or hilarious without those choices automatically becoming evidence that the person cannot perform legislative duties. The publication of private sexual material raises its own questions about consent and privacy, independent of whether readers approve of the conduct depicted.

Then there was Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner.

Weiner admitted in 2011 that he had sent sexually explicit messages and photographs to several women online after initially claiming that a photograph posted through his Twitter account resulted from hacking. His problem was no longer simply that he had engaged in sexual communication. His public deception became part of the scandal, and he resigned from Congress later that month. 

See the difference?

Sexting exists. Lying about it creates another issue.

Weiner’s later legal history is separate from the 2011 congressional episode and far more serious, so there is no need to blur those events together. The useful comparison here concerns the initial political controversy: sexual behavior existed alongside an independent question about honesty.

Former Democratic Rep. Katie Hill offers another complicated example.

In 2019, private nude photographs of Hill were published without her consent amid reports concerning relationships with staffers. Hill acknowledged what she described as an inappropriate consensual relationship with a campaign staffer. She denied having a sexual relationship with a member of her congressional staff, which was the allegation being examined by the House Ethics Committee. Hill resigned before that inquiry reached a finding, and the committee lost jurisdiction once she left office. 

Hill argued that publication of intimate photographs without her permission reflected a gendered double standard. Whatever one thinks about her admitted relationship with a campaign employee, two distinct questions existed at once: whether a relationship involving a subordinate raised ethical concerns and whether anyone had a right to distribute intimate photographs without consent. Those questions do not magically merge simply since the same politician was involved. 

Then we arrive at Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert and the 2023 performance of Beetlejuice in Denver, a sentence that has already done most of the comedic labor for me.

Boebert and a male companion were removed from the Buell Theatre after complaints about disruption during the show. Later surveillance footage showed vaping after her campaign had initially disputed that allegation, and footage reported by multiple outlets showed the pair touching each other sexually in their seats. Boebert later apologized and said she had fallen short of her values. 

I am not scandalized that two adults touched each other.

I am, however, deeply entertained by the venue.

There are thousands of locations in America where one might explore chemistry with a date. Restaurants exist. Hotels exist. Homes exist. Cars exist. Apparently one can add Beetlejuice: The Musical to the list, though I suspect the touring company would prefer that we did not.

Boebert remained a member of Congress after the episode. Her political fate is for voters, not me, to decide. The narrower observation is rather difficult to dispute: sexuality did not suddenly enter American congressional life when Chris Gallant put on leather.

It had beaten him there by centuries.

And Then There Are Sex Stories That Really Are Serious

Here is where jokes need a boundary.

Former Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz illustrates why “politician had a sex life” cannot become a blanket excuse for every controversy involving sex. The House Ethics Committee reported in December 2024 that it found substantial evidence that Gaetz had paid women for sex and drugs and had sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl in 2017. The committee said it did not find evidence that he knew she was 17 at the time, and it found insufficient evidence to conclude that he violated federal sex-trafficking law. Gaetz denied wrongdoing, and the Justice Department had previously ended its investigation without bringing criminal charges. 

That situation cannot responsibly be placed in the same ethical bucket as photographs of consenting adult partners modeling leather gear.

One concerns private sexual expression between adults. The other produced a formal congressional investigation involving payments, drug allegations, an underage person, House rules, and questions of law.

The word sex appears in both stories.

That does not make the stories equivalent.

A hammer and a cheesecake both contain the letter “a.” I would still recommend checking very carefully which one somebody intends to serve at dessert.

The distinction that deserves attention is not vanilla versus kink, gay versus straight, or photogenic versus regrettable lighting. The useful questions concern consent, legality, coercion, professional boundaries, deception, misuse of office, conflicts of interest, exploitation, and actual harm.

Those standards work rather well without requiring anyone to inspect a candidate’s underwear drawer.

The Kink Panic Is Doing More Work Than the Photographs

The reaction to Gallant fits a documented pattern involving stigma toward BDSM and kink.

A study by Hansen-Brown and Jefferson examined attitudes among 257 participants in a non-BDSM heterosexual sample and found significantly greater stigma toward BDSM practitioners than toward gay and lesbian people or people in romantic relationships used as a low-stigma comparison group. The researchers described BDSM stigma as persisting after gay and lesbian identities had experienced substantial social and medical de-stigmatization. (Hansen-Brown & Jefferson, 2023). 

Research reviews on kink have reached a related point. BDSM interests are studied through psychological, social, leisure, relationship, and sexuality frameworks rather than simply being treated as evidence of psychopathology. Modern research has documented substantial diversity among people who practice kink, including differences in gender, sexual orientation, and relationship structure. (Williams & Sprott, 2022). 

The cultural lag is easy to spot.

America can purchase handcuffs online, stream erotic dramas, read novels involving bondage, attend enormous fetish festivals, and make jokes about bedroom behavior on prime-time television. Put a leather collar around someone seeking public office, however, and parts of the political ecosystem suddenly behave as if archaeologists unearthed the lost chapter of Sodom and Gomorrah beneath a campaign office.

Gallant adds another element: he is gay.

Sexual minorities have long encountered an informal bargain in public life. Visibility becomes easier when sexuality stays sufficiently polite, sufficiently domestic, and sufficiently unthreatening. A husband at the campaign picnic is legible. A military fiancé is legible. A Pride flag has become familiar. Leather, fetish imagery, and explicit evidence that gay adults sometimes have actual sexual lives can push straight audiences beyond the comfortable edge of symbolic acceptance.

That distinction deserves scrutiny.

Acceptance that disappears the minute sexuality becomes visible is a rather conditional form of acceptance.

A Gay Candidate Is Allowed to Have Been Gay Before Filing Paperwork

Gallant’s photographs are especially interesting from the perspective of LGBTQ history since leather culture is not some recent social-media invention.

San Francisco city historical records place Mr. S Leather’s origins in 1979 and locate it within SoMa’s long-established leather community. The city’s documentation notes that founder Alan Selby later devoted major energy to AIDS fundraising and community service after the epidemic devastated his community. 

That history is much richer than the caricature of “candidate photographed in bondage gear.”

Leather communities became social networks, sexual communities, chosen families, fundraising networks, and parts of organized LGBTQ life. Many such spaces were hit brutally by HIV/AIDS. Bars, clubs, leather organizations, drag groups, and other queer institutions frequently became fundraising engines and informal care networks when public institutions failed gay men at catastrophic scale.

Reducing leather culture to “look at the weird sex people” erases that history.

It erases something else, too: gay men did not fight for the right to exist publicly merely so future generations could appear respectable enough for straight people’s campaign brochures.

Gallant should be judged on the same categories applied to anyone seeking federal office: his public record, policy positions, honesty, conduct, experience, judgment, and treatment of other people. His photographs may tell voters something about his sexual interests or past aesthetic decisions. They do not automatically answer whether his health-care proposals are sound, whether his economic arguments hold up, whether his military record is accurately represented, or whether his opponent’s positions better reflect the district.

Those are separate assessments.

And separating them is not special treatment.

It is basic intellectual hygiene.

We Need to Talk About That Six-Pack

There is, however, one allegation emerging from this controversy that appears unusually well documented.

Chris Gallant had abs.

The Suffolk County Democratic Committee effectively made that point after the photographs appeared, joking that the episode had provided “documented proof that Chris Gallant has a six-pack.” The remark came as the committee defended him against criticism connected to the images. 

At last, political fact-checking has encountered a claim with photographic evidence.

No anonymous sources.

No leaked memo.

No competing economic model.

No 487-page appropriations bill.

Just abdominal muscles.

PolitiFact can take the afternoon off.

Gallant’s broader résumé is independently verifiable through his campaign biography and reporting: Army National Guard service beginning in 2006, Black Hawk aviation, overseas service, FAA air-traffic-control work, union leadership, and volunteer firefighting. 

None of those facts require voters to support him.

They do make the effort to reduce his biography to “guy in bondage pictures” intellectually lazy.

A person can fly a helicopter and own a harness.

Apparently humans contain multitudes.

Some multitudes have buckles.

Congress Could Survive a Little Sexual Honesty

America maintains a strange relationship with politicians and sexuality.

We demand authenticity, then recoil when authenticity includes anything below the collarbone. We complain that politicians are manufactured, scripted, focus-grouped creations, then act astonished when evidence appears that one of them had a recognizable human life before campaign consultants arrived carrying navy suits.

The result is a bizarre political incentive: tell voters that you love your spouse, produce the approved family photograph, mention date night if absolutely necessary, and under no circumstances allow anyone to discover that date night eventually ended somewhere other than Applebee’s.

The standard becomes stranger for LGBTQ candidates. Straight politicians routinely reference spouses, pregnancies, children, dating histories, divorces, remarriages, and family life, all of which quietly acknowledge sexuality without forcing audiences to confront it. Gay sexuality can become controversial at the precise moment it stops being abstract.

Gallant’s photographs remove the abstraction.

Yes, this gay man had sex.

Yes, he apparently liked leather.

Yes, cameras were involved.

I have reviewed the constitutional qualifications for membership in the House of Representatives, and “must never have looked good in fetish gear” does not appear anywhere in Article I.

The Real Standard Is Consent, Conduct, and Public Duty

None of this requires pretending that every politician’s private behavior is irrelevant.

Private conduct can reveal public concerns. Abuse matters. Coercion matters. Workplace relationships can implicate ethics rules. Criminal activity matters. Deception can bear on trust. Financial arrangements can create conflicts. Conduct involving minors demands an entirely different level of scrutiny.

But a standard that treats every sexual fact as scandal is useless.

If the conduct is consensual, lawful, adult, and disconnected from abuse of public office, the argument for public relevance gets substantially weaker. People remain free to dislike it. Voters remain free to apply their own moral standards. Journalism remains free to report authentic information.

Readers are equally free to ask whether the information tells them anything valuable.

That question should apply across party lines.

Joe Barton’s consensual nude photograph deserves one analysis. Anthony Weiner’s admitted deception deserved another. Katie Hill’s private images, admitted campaign relationship, and separate ethics allegation required distinctions among several issues. Lauren Boebert’s public theater conduct raised questions different from private sexual behavior. Matt Gaetz’s House Ethics findings involved allegations and evidence of an entirely different magnitude. 

And Chris Gallant’s leather photographs deserve to be analyzed for what they actually show.

An adult gay man.

A consensual relationship.

A commercial leather company.

Some bondage gear.

And, apparently, a gym membership with excellent attendance.

This Is Not a Scandal. It Is Tuesday in SoMa.

So let us retire the fiction that Chris Gallant has introduced sexuality to congressional politics.

Congressional history has given us affairs, sexting, leaked nudes, secret relationships, public make-outs, workplace allegations, ethics investigations, sexual misconduct findings, divorces, remarriages, and enough regrettable text messages to fill the Library of Congress.

Chris Gallant showed up with a harness.

Frankly, by congressional standards, that is almost quaint.

Mr. S Leather has been doing business in San Francisco since 1979. C-SPAN has been broadcasting Congress since 1979. One institution has spent nearly half a century selling restraints. The other has spent nearly half a century showing Americans what happens when Congress cannot pass a budget.

History has a sense of humor.

Gallant’s photographs do not settle whether he should represent New York’s 1st Congressional District. His opponent’s record does not disappear in a cloud of leather conditioner either. Voters can examine both candidates, their positions, their records, their statements, and their plans, then make their own choice.

The photos establish something far narrower.

Chris Gallant had a life before politics.

He had relationships.

He explored sexuality.

He wore leather.

So have plenty of people who entered Congress, sought Congress, dated members of Congress, married members of Congress, texted members of Congress, divorced members of Congress, or discovered far too late that the theater had surveillance cameras.

That is not the shocking part.

The shocking part is that in 2026 we can still be persuaded to treat consensual adult sexuality as if someone discovered a corpse under the campaign bus.

Gallant said he would not be shamed into silence. Whatever voters decide about his candidacy, that response places the controversy where it belongs: on the question of whether private, consensual adult sexuality is evidence of public unfitness.

A leather harness cannot vote on legislation.

A collar cannot introduce a bill.

And unless somebody has finally invented a jockstrap capable of misusing campaign funds, I remain unconvinced that fetishwear deserves its own congressional oversight committee.

This is not a scandal.

It is Tuesday in SoMa.

And apparently Congress could use better photoshoots.

References

C-SPAN. (n.d.). The C-SPAN networks: Viewer’s guide. C-SPAN. 

Gallant for Congress. (2026). Meet Chris. 

Hansen-Brown, A. A., & Jefferson, S. E. (2023). Perceptions of and stigma toward BDSM practitioners. Current Psychology, 42, 19721–19729. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03112-z 

House Committee on Ethics. (2019, October 23). Statement of the chairman and ranking member regarding Representative Katie Hill. 

House Committee on Ethics. (2024, June 18). Statement regarding the matter of Representative Matt Gaetz. 

Newman, A. (2026, September 14). N.Y. Democratic House candidate admits to bondage photo shoot. The New York Times. 

Ogles, J. (2026, September 16). Gay congressional candidate Chris Gallant won’t be shamed out of midterm race over BDSM photos. The Advocate. 

People. (2026, September 15). Democratic congressional candidate acknowledges authenticity of bondage photo shoot. 

San Francisco Office of Small Business. (2025). Mr. S Leather: Legacy Business Registry historical narrative. City and County of San Francisco. 

Williams, D. J., & Sprott, R. A. (2022). Current biopsychosocial science on understanding kink. Current Opinion in Psychology, 48, 101473.