Can Anyone Cast 1st Stone at Clinton?

Cavorting with a stripper. Putting a mistress on the public payroll. Having sex on the Capitol steps. Attempting sodomy in a men’s room. Soliciting prostitutes. Seducing teenagers.

As these well-documented cases of past misbehavior by federal lawmakers suggest, Congress does not exactly have a clean slate on the subject of sexual conduct. And though little-discussed of late, this sordid history looms as a volatile dynamic when independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr sends his report on the Monica S. Lewinsky controversy to Capitol Hill, probably next month.

By all accounts, the report will contain graphic descriptions of President Clinton’s sexual encounters with the former White House intern.

In the ensuing debate, will lawmakers who have had their own personal sexual scandals be rendered speechless, as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) was during the Clarence Thomas-Anita Faye Hill hearings in 1991?

Will those with skeletons in their closets also keep a stony silence, or will they pretend to be holier than Clinton--and risk being outed as hypocrites and sinners in what one analyst fears may become a national “sexual witch hunt”?

Already, allegations are circulating of sexual peccadilloes by lawmakers.

A glimpse of what could lurk beyond the horizon came the other day when feminist leader Patricia Ireland suggested on national television that perhaps only sinless lawmakers should decide Clinton’s fate. That prompted Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), the Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, to respond: “Would we have a quorum?”

Such quips only emphasize the potential discomfort facing Congress.

“People in Congress have to recognize that if they criticize the president for shenanigans, their own sexual peccadilloes become fair game, at least in some people’s eyes,” said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato.

“I can guarantee you that some of these accusers in Congress will have the same embarrassing feeling that a certain president has had recently before this is over,” he added.

No one knows, of course, the true rate of marital infidelity--or any other form of sexual indiscretion or deviance--among lawmakers. But experts on sexual behavior in America said infidelity on Capitol Hill may be at least as high as the 20% to 33% range widely ascribed to the population.

Members of Congress “are a group of people uniquely likely to have sex outside of relationships,” said Pepper Schwartz, a sociology professor at the University of Washington and author of several books on sexual behavior. “Being in Congress breeds a sense of entitlement. And powerful people are used to being catered to, used to groupies. They expect people to come on to them. They have strong egos, a sense of risk, of adventure, a need for gratification, for adulation.”

Tom W. Smith, director of the annual General Social Survey by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, agreed that the number of sexual improprieties among lawmakers is probably higher than among the public.

“There’s a line of argumentation that goes: People in positions of power or wealth or fame . . . would be more likely to have extramarital affairs,” he said. “The second line of argumentation goes: These people are achievers, people with drive, people used to success--and that also spills into other appetites as well.”

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There certainly has been no shortage of sex scandals on Capitol Hill in recent decades.

In 1974, then-Rep. Wilbur D. Mills (D-Ark.), the powerful (and married) chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, publicly partied in a drunken stupor with stripper Fanne Foxe (billed onstage as the Argentine Firecracker). The incident, one of the first involving a member of Congress that gained wide attention, featured Foxe jumping into Washington’s Tidal Basin in an effort to elude police.

Two years later, another powerful House committee chairman, then-Rep. Wayne L. Hays (D-Ohio), was discredited when it was learned that he had put on the public payroll a mistress, Elizabeth Ray, who could not type and would not answer the phones.

Also in 1976, three other now-departed congressmen were engulfed in sex scandals. John Young (D-Texas) was accused by a young aide of keeping her on the payroll primarily to have sex with him; Joe D. Waggoner Jr. (D-La.) was charged with soliciting police decoys for purposes of prostitution; Allan T. Howe (D-Utah) was convicted of soliciting two policewomen posing as prostitutes.

In the early 1980s, one of the most sensational cases involved then-Rep. John Jenrette (D-S.C.), whose wife disclosed that they had made love on the steps of the Capitol. The wife, Rita Jenrette, later posed for Playboy magazine.

In 1980, then-Rep. Robert Bauman (R-Md.) pleaded guilty to sexual solicitation after being accused of committing oral sodomy on a teenage boy.

Others tarnished by scandals involving homosexual encounters have included Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who was reprimanded in 1990 for his relationship with a male prostitute, and Gerry Studds (D-Mass.), who was censured in 1983 for having sexual relations with a teenage page. Frank remains in office; Studds retired from his seat in 1996.

In 1981, Rep. Jon C. Hinson (R-Miss.) resigned after he was arrested in a Capitol Hill men’s room and charged with attempted sodomy.

The roster goes on and on. Those embroiled in sex scandals have included ex-Sen. (and former Transportation Secretary) Brock Adams (D-Wash.), current Sen. Charles S. Robb (D-Va.), and former Reps. Gus Savage (D-Ill.), Donald E. Lukens (R-Ohio), Fred W. Richmond (R-N.Y.) and Jim Bates (D-San Diego).

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Given the history of congressional sexual misconduct, Washington-based pollster Andrew Kohut said he believes that GOP lawmakers are likely to focus more on clearly impeachable offenses, if any, than on the president’s sexual indiscretions.

“What they are going to try to do is find a way not to deal with this,” Kohut predicted. “Whatever [of their] own skeletons they have will only push them further in that direction.”

Sabato, a frequent television commentator, said he has been urged by Clinton sympathizers to highlight not only “all kinds of sleazy situations” but also the fact that one of the president’s earliest and harshest critics, Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), has gone through two messy divorces.

Said Sabato: “Should someone married three times be lecturing us about moral values? I don’t think so.”

Barr, a Judiciary Committee member, declined comment.

Schwartz, of the University of Washington, said she believes that Clinton’s critics are unlikely to pull their punches even if they have misbehaved themselves.

“Just because people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones doesn’t mean they don’t, or won’t,” she said.