Already these questions, and others, are rightly the subject of public investigations by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and by Nashville’s Metro Council, and there may soon be others. We have no way of knowing whether the investigations will exonerate the mayor or reveal improprieties that are unacceptable in a public servant. Unlike her political opponents, I prefer to wait for their findings before forming an opinion about whether she should resign.

“Please know that I’m disappointed in myself but also understand that I’m a human and that I made a mistake,” Ms. Barry said in her news conference. Many people here are upset with their mayor and angry about the way she has squandered their hopes for her political future. But I think most Nashvillians heard that statement with real compassion.

This mayor has been beloved because she’s so human, because she works impossible hours and seems to be everywhere at once, sharing in our happiness and in our heartbreak, wearing her own happiness and her own heartbreak on her sleeve. How shocked should we be to learn that the mayor we love for her humanity is human enough to make this kind of mistake?

I know I sound naïve. In truth, we don’t know if Megan Barry’s affair was only an error of human judgment. We don’t know if it was different in any substantive way from the kind of behavior that has already brought down so many other public servants. All we know for sure is that this is a particularly fraught moment in American history for a person in a position of power — male or female — to reveal an affair with a subordinate.

Predictably, Twitter is aflame with outraged conservatives who believe Nashville liberals are giving Ms. Barry a pass simply because we share her politics. That’s a fair point to ponder. When religious conservatives in Alabama had no trouble voting for a credibly accused pedophile during December’s special Senate election, I voiced the same accusation.

People here may be keeping an open mind until the official investigations are complete, but that’s not the same thing as giving our mayor a pass. And Ms. Barry is fully cooperating with the inquiries into her behavior. The same cannot be said of, for example, the president of the United States.

In the wake of the #MeToo tsunami, the conservative coyote pack is howling that liberals would be calling for the mayor’s head if she were a Republican man instead of a Democratic woman. But so far, at least, there is absolutely no evidence that Sergeant Forrest was subject to any form of coercion. Ms. Barry’s affair with her bodyguard was both irresponsible and deeply painful for innocent people, but in all the revelations that have unfolded since the news broke, nothing has come to light to suggest that this is the liberal female version of a #MeToo narrative.