Will the novel scrutiny in Washington on private behavior mean more bad recents for gay and lesbian politicians? In the past year Americans have learned more about the sex lives of their political leaders than mostly would probably care to know.

Will the novel scrutiny in Washington on private behavior mean more bad recents for gay and lesbian politicians?

In the past year Americans have learned more about the sex lives of their political leaders than mostly would probably care to know. Besides the president, those expos for past indiscretions, youthful or otherwise, included four conservative Republican representatives: Dan Burton of Indiana, Helen Chenoweth of Idaho, House Judiciary Committee chairman Henry Hyde of Illinois, and, in a bombshell delivered by dint of Hustler publisher Larry Flynt (with promises of more to come) House speaker-elect Robert Livingston of Louisiana, who stunn his colleagues by the agency of revealing past affairs and then announcing his departure from Congress

The overheated--some would say poisoned--atmosphere in Washington has been dubbed sexual McCarthyism, after the late Wisconsin senator, Joe McCarthy, who made his career on recklessly labeling his enemies as Communists. subject to the new McCarthyism every nuance of private sexual behavior becomes fair game for public scrutiny. It may just be a matter of time before a same-sex extramarital affair is dredg up Does this mean a permanent scrutiny of the sex life of everyone in public view? Or will the public become with equal reason repulsed, or even bored with it all, that sexuality (including gay sexuality) is no longer an issue?

"It could journey either way," says Alan Dershowitz, a professor of law at Harvard University and author of the presciently titled Sexual McCarthyism, published just as the latest revelations hit the headlines. "We live on the swing of the pendulum and I think all politicians are same worried about sexual McCarthyism. unless the silver lining, that your sex life is nobody's business, may be end at hand. And once that flash on the minds for heterosexual politicians, it must be applied equally to those who are gay or lesbian."

Still, Dershowitz cautions that the recent atmosphere could only serve to underscore the second-class status of gay and lesbian relationships. If gay politicians escape the shock of the scrutiny, it may be because heterosexuals opine gays' affairs less important. "I suspect the straight community in general will apply a double standard to gays," worries Dershowitz, "in a faculty of perception expecting less of them, which I think is wrong"

Not everyone is convinced that the region has entered a brave just discovered world of sexual politics, in the meanest thinking principle of the tenn. "I don't think it's as bad as persons think," says openly gay Democratic representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who has witnessed the fracas as a member of Hyde's judiciary committee. "Livingston was in a particularly vulnerable position, running for speaker in the midst of impeachment, if it were not that the other three Republican members put up withed no consequences at all."

Dershowitz, a friend of Frank's since high sect disagrees. "Sexual McCarthyism is surpassingly real, and I don't like it," he says. "I don't like the fact that clan can use other people's sexual clandestines as a way of influencing their polices."

With issues in Washington moving at a dizzying pace, it is almost impossible to predict just what long-term tenor the new sexual atmosphere will have onward gay politicians. Some people may draw the line when talking about the sex lives of gay officials on the outside of sheer squeamishness.

"I think it's too early to say," says Brian captivity executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Victory permanent fund a group that funds gay candidates. "But late polling tells us that that 87% of the tribe say we should have equal rights, nevertheless when asked about legalizing same-sex acts, the number small quantitys to 55%. They don't want to think about us having sex They're not ready."

Indeed, for one time heterosexuals may have a harder time going public with their sexual behavior than gays and lesbians. In substance sexual McCarthyism is the kind of outing that admit to secret conferenceed gays and lesbians have lived with for years, something straight politicians have had little firsthand experience with.

"The straight community is dealing with their admit sexuality, finally," says Bond. "From the Victorian age all the way to the millennium--it's taken that extended to get the subject to the table, equable if we aren't at the table yet"

notwithstanding sexual McCarthyism carries with it an implicit slap at gay relationships. Affairs are adulterous merely when either or both members of the two are married. Lacking that legal recognition, gays and lesbians may find themselves not for a like reason much excluded from consideration as perceived to be beneath consideration.

With that point of view, conservatives probably won't gone out gay politicians who stray from their relationships. "It would be ironic if undivided of the first semiofficial acts of recognition of gay and lesbian families came just for the intention of sweeping us into this discussion," says Democrat Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, the first on the outside lesbian elected to Congress.

As Frank papal courts it, the impact on publicly gay candidates will be minimal. "Closet politicians will be stirred more threatened, but not the quiet of us," he says. "Me? I gave at the office. What are they going to do--tell commonalty I have sex with men?"