I always enjoy stories like this, because the Republicans are so very hypocritical and don't mind doing really terrible things to people in the name of Jesus. Via The Kansas City Star:

Text messages obtained by The Star reveal a sexually charged relationship between House Speaker John Diehl and a college freshman in a Missouri Capitol internship program that shut down abruptly last month.

The conversations unveil a flirty rapport and suggest an intimacy between arguably the state’s most influential lawmaker and a young woman taking some pleasure in a secret association.

The texts show occasional efforts by Diehl and the intern to meet in person. They range from mundane chatter, about boring meetings and dreading speeches, to the more sexually suggestive.

Diehl declined to comment. The intern, who has hired an attorney specializing in employment matters, told The Star that the text messages were not real. Meantime, she has told confidants that she had an ongoing relationship with Diehl.

Multiple sources helped The Star confirm that the screenshots of the texts, which show Diehl’s business cellphone number, originated from the intern’s smartphone. The text conversations also included photographs of each of them. And others who know Diehl well said they recognized the language and tone of the conversations from their own text exchanges with him.

The discovery of the text messages between Diehl and the intern follows a decision by Missouri Southern State University to end its Capitol internship program more than a month prematurely.

Richard Miller, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Missouri Southern, told The Star that the school pulled its four interns out of the state Capitol this spring after an unspecified incident. Yet Miller, citing student privacy laws, declined to be more specific about what led the university to end the internships.

Missouri Southern has held a legislative internship program for the past 20 years, sending students to the United Nations in New York City and Washington, D.C.

“This is the first time we have pulled all the interns,” Miller said. “Usually, when something happens, it is a problem with the interns themselves, but that was not the situation this year.”