A TOPSY-TURVY MORAL UNIVERSE: ITS NEVER BEEN TOUGHER FOR AMERICANS

Like Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling, American morality is upside-down.
But this is no MGM musical. Behavior that should trigger serious
consequences essentially is winked at while participants in victimless acts
often suffer grave repercussions.

CONSIDER BRIAN Peterson and Amy Grossberg, the young lovers who put their
newborn son in a plastic bag and pitched him into a Dumpster. "Mistakes
were made," Brian told the judge as Amy sobbed. He recently received two
years in jail, while she faces two-and-a-half years. Good behavior could
spring them in a jiffy. Meanwhile, nanny Louise Woodward is back in Britain
after her conviction in the death of eight-month-old Matthew Eappen. She
was sentenced last year to the 279 days she spent in jail awaiting trial.

Compare these baby killers with Will Foster, who was recently convicted of
intention to sell marijuana he grew in his basement. He says he wanted
relief from rheumatoid arthritis. Sentence: 93 years behind bars.

Foster is not alone. According to the Justice Department, in 1994, 16,316
inmates --more than 21 percent of the federal prison population -- were
locked up for low-level, non-violent drug offenses. In 1996, the average
federal drug sentence was seven years. Sexual abuse averaged six years,
while some forms of manslaughter cost just two years. Is it too much to ask
that violent criminals be punished more severely than those who voluntarily
toast their brains like Pop Tarts?

At the Pentagon, things are topsy-turvy, too. Adultery often fuels
deception, divorce and even crimes of passion, not quite keystones of
military readiness. Nonetheless, Defense Department officials considered
relaxing the military justice penalties against extramarital affairs. After
several weeks of public criticism, the Pentagon announced that adultery
would remain "unacceptable conduct," but that commanders should seek courts
martial only when "conduct is prejudicial to good order and discipline or
is Service-discrediting," as a Defense Department statement explained.
Presumably, discreet affairs could go unpunished.

Army Major Gen. David Hale exemplifies the military's ambivalence about
this matter. Despite allegations that he pressured the wives of underlings
for sex, he was allowed to retire quietly last February. A Pentagon
investigation of his actions continues.

When Lt. Kelly Flinn had an adulterous affair with an enlisted woman's
husband in 1996, that marriage ended in divorce. "Get real," Senate
Majority Leader Trent Lott then advised critics of adultery in uniform.
Flinn avoided adultery charges, resigned and received a general discharge
rather than a dishonorable one.

According to a Family Research Council (FRC) study, the Navy routinely sees
10 percent of female sailors return pregnant after long deployments. "The
current policy actually encourages pregnancy because it subsidizes
pregnancy," says Elaine Donnelly, president of the Michigan-based Center
for Military Readiness. Rather than face penalties, pregnant personnel
receive easier assignments, time off and even better housing.

Retired Army Lt. Colonel Robert Maginnis, director of the FRC's Military
Readiness Project, says that, in rare cases, pregnancies may involve Navy
wives whose husbands visit during shore leave. But the vast majority of
on-ship pregnancies do not involve spouses, since the Pentagon would not
assign a husband and wife to the same vessel. Besides, most female sailors
are single.

"Clearly, when you're deployed at sea for three months and you have a
relatively high incidence of pregnancy among the women aboard that ship,"
Maginnis says, "then you know that they have not been with their husbands.
They have been with others."

Maginnis served in the Persian Gulf War, where he says soldiers saw more
than just combat. "During Desert Storm, we had far more sex than we had
shooting in the Gulf," he says. "That was widespread. There was a major
impact on trust and morale."

While such heterosexual hijinks earn shrugs, the mere discovery of a
soldier's or sailor's homosexuality is a ticket to military oblivion. Why?
Are gay people just like alcoholics and kleptomaniacs, as Lott recently
suggested last month? Under President Clinton's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"
policy, expulsion of gay GIs has soared 67 percent since 1994. "As
commander-in-chief," commentator Andrew Sullivan has written, "Bill Clinton
has fired more homosexuals than any other employer in America."

The Pentagon maintains a jaw-dropping double standard on gay sex. As
Jennifer Egan reported in an excellent article in the June 28 New York
Times Magazine, a Navy custom --nicknamed "It ain't queer unless it's tied
to the pier" -- essentially ignores gay encounters between regularly
straight men when woman are unavailable. In other words, the real threats
to unit cohesion are not otherwise heterosexual sailors who become intimate
on the high seas, but gay sailors with the discipline and professionalism
to keep their hands to themselves.

Americans apparently have decided to "get real" about perjury as well. No
one blinked when LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman received a $200 fine and three
years' probation for lying in the O.J. Simpson murder trial about his use
of a racial epithet.

Americans today seem similarly comfortable with the prospect of
presidential perjury. According to a July 29 ABC News survey, only 39
percent of those polled believe President Clinton should be impeached if he
lied under oath about an affair with Monica Lewinsky, down from 55 percent
who favored his removal when the scandal broke.

But perjury is no victimless crime. Had a Paula Jones trial occurred, false
testimony -- if that is, in fact, what the President gave -- might have
robbed her of justice. More important, if the legal quest for truth permits
perjury, the justice system will crumble beneath a cascade of lies.

Americans must re-discover right from wrong: behavior that harms others
deserves far harsher treatment than that in which people merely harm
themselves. When growing pot is punished more severely than infanticide and
being gay is treated worse than coerced sex with the wives of one's
subordinates, it's time for Americans to come down from the ceiling and
plant their spats back on solid ground.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski