Commentary: Sledgehammers for you, pillows for me: the politics of selective morality in Tennessee

There is something almost theological about watching a politician suddenly discover grace.

State Sen. Brent Taylor, the Republican nominee for Tennessee’s newly redrawn 9th Congressional District, is now asking voters to extend him something he has rarely seemed eager to extend to the people he criticizes: mercy. 

The Nashville Scene reported this week that Taylor acknowledged sending nude photographs of himself in the past, while one source told the publication that an unsolicited picture was sent as recently as 2021, when Taylor was 53. Taylor called the conduct “youthful indiscretions,” said his wife and God had forgiven him, and suggested others should consider doing the same.

And I believe in forgiveness. I am a Black preacher. Grace, mercy, redemption, reconciliation and restoration are not foreign concepts to me. But neither is accountability or consistency. And that is precisely where this situation becomes larger than Brent Taylor’s private behavior.

The issue is not simply that Taylor wants grace. The issue is that he appears to have discovered a softer, gentler moral vocabulary at the exact moment he needs it himself.

Tennessee congressional candidate responds to allegations he sent unsolicited nude pics

This is the same Brent Taylor whose public rhetoric has often been anything but gentle. He once described people working on a Memphis hotel-tax measure as “working harder than an ugly stripper.” During debate over state intervention in Memphis-Shelby County Schools, he said students were “hanging in there like a crackhead’s last tooth.” 

Taylor’s political persona has not generally been built around ambiguity, tenderness or restraint. He has cultivated an image of toughness, certainty, law and order, punishment and accountability. He has supported aggressive state intervention in Memphis institutions and policies, and Democratic lawmakers who have dealt with him have publicly described his style as bullying and crass.

But now the hammer has become a pillow.

Suddenly we are invited to consider context. Suddenly the past should not define a person. Suddenly a family’s private process of forgiveness matters. Suddenly we should recognize human frailty and complexity. Suddenly judgment should be tempered by grace.

Again, I agree with every one of those principles.

I simply want them applied consistently. 

Because too much of contemporary conservative politics has operated according to a remarkably convenient moral formula: a sledgehammer for your failures and a pillow for mine. 

Hypocrisy is their superpower

That hypocrisy shows up whenever politicians and commentators try to wrap themselves in a kind of moral superiority while applying radically different standards depending on whose conduct is being examined. At the state and local level, politicians like Taylor use similar language to condemn protesters, immigrants, Black elected officials, public institutions and communities they believe have fallen short.

Many political voices that once built entire brands around “character,” “family values,” “personal responsibility” and Christian morality have demonstrated extraordinary flexibility when those standards collide with partisan power. Conduct that would disqualify an opponent becomes irrelevant, exaggerated, old news or evidence of persecution when committed by someone on their side.

That is not moral consistency. It is tribalism dressed up in moral language.

And that is what makes the Taylor situation important beyond the salacious details. I do not believe an election should turn solely on someone’s failures. I do not know everything that happened inside Taylor’s marriage, and I have no desire to know. His wife’s decision to forgive him belongs to her. His relationship with God belongs to him. Human beings fail. People change. People deserve opportunities for redemption.

But public hypocrisy belongs to all of us.

If Taylor believes his Democratic congressional opponent, state Rep. Justin J.Pearson should be judged harshly for his behavior at the Tennessee Capitol when state troopers arrested Pearson’s brother for not leaving his seat in legislative session, then Taylor cannot suddenly insist that his own behavior should be understood primarily through forgiveness and context. 

If he believes immigrants should face severe consequences for breaking rules, then consequences cannot suddenly become unfair when he is the one under scrutiny. If he believes Memphis institutions deserve aggressive intervention when he concludes they have failed, then he cannot reasonably expect scrutiny of his own failures to arrive wrapped in bubble wrap.

You cannot spend years carrying a sledgehammer for everybody else and then demand a pillow when it is your turn to lie down.

This is why the moment should matter to voters even if they could not care less about Taylor’s personal life. The larger question is whether we are going to continue rewarding politicians and political movements that weaponize morality against others while privatizing grace for themselves.

There are no perfect candidates. There never have been. Voting is not canonization. We are not electing saints, bishops, prophets or messiahs. Morality cannot be legislated into perfection, and no political party possesses a monopoly on virtue or vice.

But voters can demand consistency.

We can reject the notion that accountability is only for the people we dislike. We can refuse to accept political movements that preach personal responsibility downward while practicing endless rationalization upward. We can insist that if grace is a principle, it must be available to everybody. If accountability is a principle, it must apply to everybody. If dignity is a principle, it cannot disappear simply because the person being discussed is poor, Black, undocumented, politically inconvenient or unpopular.

And then we can vote accordingly.