Start down that road, and public figures (and their families) are needlessly humiliated, useful careers are destroyed, and citizens are left feeling cynical. My mother called me on Thursday night to tell me the late-breaking news about Mr. Livingston, and we were reduced to giggles. Not because we thought the situation was truly funny, but because the moment was absurd.

Certainly, when cynicism about virtue in high places becomes so abundant, we need to be concerned. But what do we do? Some people would say that because these public figures and supposed ''role models'' have committed adultery, they deserve to be outed, and that if they don't suffer some consequences, our young people won't know right from wrong.

I suppose we could try going this route again: teaching values to the young by conducting sexual witch hunts. But what will they really learn? That adults are nasty and unforgiving. That, as Nathaniel Hawthorne demonstrated, it is often too easy to get people enthused about hurting people who behave differently.

Adultery is a private choice. The important rejection of it comes from love, not intimidation. The reason not to commit it is that it is likely to devastate someone you love if he or she learns about it. And the only way that person won't learn about it is if you tell a lot of lies. Telling a lot of lies eventually harms your ability to maintain a trusting relationship; secretiveness undermines intimacy. And tending a committed, intimate relationship is a deeply meaningful part of life, though we all know it has its share of bad days.

While biographers have described people who are exceptions and seem able to countenance adultery and marital intimacy at the same time, by and large the reason not to choose adultery is that the pleasure it offers is taken in trade for harming more enduring love and more important loved ones.