Republished with permission from Lucian K. Truscott IV

I mean, if the Germans hadn’t come up with the word schadenfreude, where would we be? As we have learned time and time again, prissy scolders in the Republican Party and their distaff adjunct, Moms for Liberty, just can’t keep it in their pants or their mouths, and my friends and fellow countrymen, this one is just delicious.

Florida GOP chairman Christian Ziegler and his wife Bridget, a co-founder of the holier-than-thou Moms for Liberty, are embroiled in a sex scandal involving a charge of sexual battery against Ziegler and the involvement of Mrs. Ziegler in three-way sex—the kind in which two women, one of them Ziegler’s wife and the other woman not his wife—engage in sex with Ron DeSantis’ hand-picked Republican Party Chairman. If that’s not enough, Christian Ziegler has been charged with raping the woman he and his wife had their three-way with, and if that’s not enough, there’s a video. And we all know by now what that means: when it comes to sex tapes, if there’s one, there are more where that one came from.

The whole thing wouldn’t be so delicious if the Moms for Liberty founder wasn’t involved. Moms for Liberty—let’s just shorten it to MFL—is the arch-conservative national organization of moms backed by right-wing billionaires who have been pushing for anti-sex education, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-Black history legislation in states both red and blue. Bridget Ziegler is a member of the Sarasota County School Board, having been appointed to the post to fill a vacant seat by Gov. DeSantis in 2014 and re-elected since then.

MFL chapters around the country have been involved in banning books in schools and public libraries that “encourage” differing sexual identities and the teaching of Critical Race Theory or any other curriculum that deals with institutionalized discrimination against Black people and other minorities, like, say, segregation and other Jim Crow laws. What really gets MFL’s hackles up, however, is gay and trans people. Bridget Ziegler was a big supporter of Florida’s 2022 Parental Rights in Education Act, the “don’t say gay” law that prohibits “classroom instruction” or “discussion” about gender identity or sexual orientation. The law also empowers parents to file legal challenges against schools for having books in their libraries or mentioning subjects they object to. This has led to many Florida school libraries getting rid of books by Judy Blume and other authors who write for young adults and other books on gay or lesbian subjects such as “Heather has Two Mommies” and “My Two Dads and Me.”

On the Sarasota school board, Mrs. Ziegler was recently involved in a controversy when at a meeting, the only gay member on the board was called a “groomer” and other slurs. Mrs. Ziegler refused to back his call to have the parent admonished not to use anti-gay slurs when speaking to the board, calling the person’s statements, “free speech.” The gay member on the school board ended up walking out of the meeting in protest.

GOP Chairman Christian Ziegler is under investigation by the Sarasota police for an allegation of rape made by the woman with whom Ziegler and his wife had previously engaged in three-way sex. According to an affidavit obtained by the Florida Center for Government Accountability, Ziegler and his wife had scheduled another three-way with the same woman, but when Christian Ziegler informed her that his wife wouldn’t be there for the three-way, the woman demurred, telling Ziegler, “Sorry, I was mostly in for her.” According to the affidavit, Ziegler then drove to her apartment and raped her. Traumatized, the woman didn’t leave her apartment for two days, but then reported the rape to the police and a rape kit was used as part of the investigation.

The affidavit reveals that the woman had known Ziegler for 20 years at the time of the alleged rape. She told police investigators that Ziegler did not wear a condom and said in the affidavit that Ziegler told her after he had raped her, “I’m leaving the same way I came in.” Ziegler was reportedly caught on surveillance video entering the woman’s apartment on the date of the alleged rape. When questioned by the Washington Post, his attorney had no comment other than to say that Ziegler “will be completely exonerated.”

Ziegler told the police the sexual encounter with the woman was consensual and claimed that he had videotaped it and uploaded the video to Google Drive. The Sarasota police got a search warrant for the video and served it on Google. Police have also issued search warrants for Ziegler’s phone, computer, and other electronic devices, hardly a good sign when you are the Florida Republican Party chairman. The alleged rape victim has cooperated with police investigators, allowing them to monitor her continuing communications with Ziegler by text and telephone until Ziegler started to suspect he was being listened in on and ceased the communications with the woman.

Gov. DeSantis has called for Ziegler to step down from his party chairmanship, but he has refused. According to the Washington Post, Ziegler sent an email to Republican Party members in Florida informing them that he is not leaving his post and said that he and his wife were “targeted” and claimed that it was “most likely due to my wife and I being such loud political voices.”

Bridget Ziegler was appointed to a special taxing district that DeSantis created to take away Disney’s special control of the area it owns around Orlando, Florida. Ziegler has said that content created by Disney—you know, cartoons and movies for children and books and musicals—“sexualizes” children.

In the affidavit obtained by the Florida Center for Accountability, Bridget Ziegler admitted to the three-way with the alleged rape victim and her husband but claimed “it only happened one time.”

Neither Moms for Liberty or the Florida Republican Party has responded to repeated requests for comment from the Washington Post and multiple other media outlets. Gov. DeSantis, however, told the Orlando Sentinel that the Republican Party can’t have a chairman “under that kind of scrutiny” and said, “I hope the charges aren’t true. I’ve known him, I’ve known Bridget, they’ve been friends. But the mission is more important.”

Of course it is. Those finger-waggers in the Republican Party have to get the word out that three-way sex with your wife and another woman is okay for me, but not for thee.