Private Sin, Public Matter

Put it this way: I would sooner vote for a politician who cheated on his spouse than for one who went to a prostitute. One is demeaning to a particular woman, the second to all women.

For some people, adultery itself is disqualifying in a politician. I think marriage is too mysterious an enterprise to go that far. It's hard to know -- and therefore impossible to judge -- what happens inside someone else's marriage. People stray; spouses forgive, or not; that's their business. But paying for sex, in whatever form, is both illegal and repulsive. It reveals a view of women as commodities that is relevant to lawmakers' public responsibilities.

There is, I think, a men-are-from-Mars aspect to this discussion -- which may account for the Kessler/Marcus vs. Dionne/Ignatius dichotomy. Men, at least some men, tend to think of purchased sex -- even if they would never think of purchasing sex themselves -- as less offensive. It's more transactional, less emotional, therefore -- supposedly -- less troubling.

But, honey, she didn't mean anything to me.

That excuse might make Mrs. Vitter feel better about Mr. Vitter, though I wouldn't bet on it from her previous comments, likening herself more to Lorena Bobbitt than to Hillary Clinton. It doesn't make me feel better about Senator Vitter.

You could argue that prostitution should be legal in this country, as it is in many others -- that America should get over its hang-ups about sex and that regulating prostitution would protect women from being victimized. I don't buy that, and in any event, I don't see my privacy-advocate colleagues making that case.

One man who has understood the importance of dealing with the demand side is former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who went after prostitution in the city by targeting customers as well as prostitutes. Under "Operation Losing Proposition," Giuliani's police arrested johns and confiscated their cars. He didn't wring his hands over their lost privacy.

So what does Candidate Giuliani say now -- now that his own marital missteps are campaign fodder, and his southern regional chairman is David Vitter? At a town meeting in New Hampshire last week, Giuliani sounded like my fellow columnists. "I believe," he said, "it's a personal issue."

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