The popular former state attorney general had been elected governor 16 months earlier with the largest vote margin in New York history - larger, for example, than either Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt when they won their gubernatorial elections.

Yet after the news broke that the married father of three children had been caught arranging a sexual liaison with a prostitute, one public opinion poll showed that 70 percent of New Yorkers wanted him to resign.

Some commentators described Spitzer's infidelity as essentially a "private" matter. These pundits miss what the ordinary man and woman in New York instinctively understands: Marriage is not just a private relationship. The office of husband or wife is a public office and a public trust. Marriage is regulated by law because the public has a huge interest in the institution of marriage. Entry into marriage is officially licensed by state officials, and exit is regulated by judges applying divorce laws.

Marriage is a public office and public trust as well as a private relationship. The integrity of any public official's or candidate's fidelity in marriage is relevant to his or her qualification to assume the trust of any public office because marriage itself is a public institution. Marriage is important because it is the foundation of the family, and, thus, of our society.

When marriage commitments are broken, there are serious public consequences. From mental and physical health clinics to divorce courts, juvenile courts, social security, educational achievement, and productivity, the public bears a high cost when marital vows are violated.

The founders of our nation understood the public role of marriage and family life. John Adams wrote: "The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families. How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers?"

Adams also declared: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Patrick Henry, agreed that: "Bad men cannot make good citizens. . . . A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom."

There are serious professional concerns today about the high rates of teen sexual activity, of non-marital cohabitation, of childbearing out of wedlock, of marital infidelity, of domestic violence, of divorce, and of over-stressed parenting, to name just a few quality-of-family issues. The public consequences of these phenomena are undeniable, and they are a concern to the general public as well to professionals.

The same day as newspapers across the country carried the story of the Spitzer scandal, they also reported that the Centers for Disease Control had discovered that more than one-fourth of America's teenage girls have been infected with one or more sexually transmitted disease. The public health consequences of that oft-labeled "private" behavior will afflict that generation (and their families) for the rest of their lives.

Less than a month ago, the same newspaper that broke the story about Spitzer's infidelity carried another story about the concerns in 2000 of John McCain's staff that his relationship with an attractive female lobbyist "had become romantic." If The New York Times' story about McCain was inadequately substantiated, the subject of the report was clearly appropriate.

Given the deteriorating state of families in America, the need to repair the moral infrastructure of the nation, and the many recent scandals involving sexual improprieties of public officials, American voters have a right to be concerned about the bad example and corrupting effects of infidelity.

That some persons with low character have risen to high office may be due in part to a reluctance of journalists and others in a position to raise the subject of marital fidelity for fear of being accused of "casting stones" and violating "privacy." Those fears are based on the defective assumption that marital infidelity is not a matter of public concern. The Spitzer scandal proves otherwise.

It is important for media to candidly, with respect, ask questions about and responsibly investigate marital infidelity issues concerning all candidates for and holders of public office. The New York Times deserves credit for having the courage to raise these issues and to report the controversies about both McCain and Spitzer.

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* LYNN D. WARDLE is the Bruce C. Hafen Professor of Law at Brigham Young University Law School where he teaches family law and other subjects.