Throughout history, people have held their leaders, the ones they look up to, to a certain moral standard. Those who do not meet this standard, from Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, all the way back to Louis XVI, received enormous backlash (sometimes the guillotine) from the public.

This has held true for all positions of power or leadership, even including directors or film stars in Hollywood, and big business heads. In recent years, however, we seem to have dropped some of these moral obligations, especially those held to people in political offices. This raises the question: Should we hold political powers to the same moral responsibility as those in the media?

On October 5th, 2017, sexual harassment allegations on Harvey Weinstein were released, citing several hollywood actresses who have accused him of sexual assault Immediately, the media is buzzing with women speaking out against their abusers, and against those celebrities who stood by and allowed for it to happen.

As soon as October 17th, Weinstein steps down from head of his company. All this while new reports begin coming out of accusations against over 30 men for sexual assault, including actor Kevin Spacey, comedian Louis C.K., and Today Show host Matt Lauer. The internet and news outlets blew up with hate comments, and accordingly so, many of these men lost their jobs.

Among these men, however, was Alabama politician Roy Moore, accused of the sexual harassment of five teenagers. This resulted in the cut of $50,000 for his campaign for State Senate. He denies all allegations against him, and in fact has full support from President Trump.

This is teaching American citizens that not only is sexual harassment okay, but that it should be an acceptable behavior of those in charge. Roy told Sean Hannity, a host at Fox News, that he had in fact had relations with teenage girls while he was in his thirties, but that he had “parental consent” and claims that the relationships were no reflection of his moral values. He then stated that they were only trying to ruin his campaign because it is “Inconceivable to think that someone would wait 40 years because they are ashamed or embarrassed of something, and less than 30 days before a general election, come out and make allegations.”

President Donald Trump himself is no stranger to allegations of sexual misconduct. During his 2016 presidential campaign, an audio tape was released where Mr. Trump talked about doing inappropriate things to women without their consent. This was in a private Access Hollywood bus in the year 2005.

Since this time, 13 women have come forward with their stories of harassment involving Mr. Trump. Despite all of this, he still managed to continue to gain support, followers, and most importantly, votes. With the way our society rightfully outcasts and alienates others, including celebrities, business leaders, etc., why should we deem these actions from political leaders acceptable?

We as Americans need to make sure that these unethical men do not continue to rise higher in power. Without our support, political leaders would not be where they are in our Democratic society. We need to begin truly asking ourselves who deserves our endorsement, and who will truly represent American values.

Our leaders should be held to the same standards that we expect of the rest of society, and the same actions should be taken when they refuse to accept these societal guidelines. The government needs to practice the same forced resignation methods used by everyone else in the workplace.

It seems as though the closer you get to Washington, the less they care about ethics. This is especially odd when you take into consideration the large amount of Christians in our current government who claim to fight to restore Christian values in America. They cling to this reason when wanting to rid the media of corruption, but not of their own party.

In conclusion, the flawed ethics of America as a nation, is being reflected when we choose our leaders. While we continue to punish those in Hollywood for sexual misconduct, we cannot push the issue aside entirely when discussing politics, especially when it comes to the future of our country and the way we present ourselves as a nation to the rest of the world.

While stories are not always true, we need to start taking sexual assault cases seriously, and the only place this can start is in government, in our courts system, and in the creating and passing of new laws against the abuse of political power. After discussing all of the events which have recently unfolded, and when considering the differences between public response to different sexual misconduct cases, it is clear that action must be taken, and soon. Without this, our society will only continue to allow the normalization of political corruption.