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Comment by jonbarker | Hacker News Reader

There's a non-moralistic reason to be concerned with adultery in the case of politicians and public servants, which is that knowledge of it can be used for extortion.

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Well, there's two sides to that. The other being they may be using their position of power to strong arm less powerful people into an affair, then discrediting their lover to cover their ass. Even if you don't care about that person being mistreated, it tells you something about their general priorities and how likely they are to be generally corrupt.

That's only because its a crime striking those laws down and removing them from the military system - would reduce the attack surface for bad actors trying to suborn people in to betraying the USA.

Likewise having a spiff 18 months ago at burning man or glasto isn't really a huge risk to security if its not a crime - would also help with recruitment for TLA's

That's why it's important keep gay people out of Congress, too?

They wouldn't care if you are gay. But if you are closeted and gay, that becomes something you can be blackmailed over and you will fail to get a security clearance. I don't know what they do when someone who can't get a clearance is elected... but the only reason they ask about lifestyle factors in background investigations is to determine if you're able to be blackmailed. If you're open, then obviously you can't be blackmailed with the fact you're gay or polyamorous or in an open marriage or whatever. It's the secrecy that's the problem. (This is all off-topic though, since I don't actually care about adultery and I don't think the system I'd build could legitimately catch anyone for adultery. It would do nothing but show that peoples reputations can be so easily smeared with basically no evidence using these sorts of systems. That's the point.)

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