Conservatives, to invoke William Buckley, have stood athwart this history yelling “stop!” It isn’t that there aren’t some real-world sexual harassers. There probably are. It is, however, that conservatives don’t share the assumptions that liberals and the mainstream media impose. The main one being, of course, that the women are probably telling the truth in such instances. We saw this in its most concentrated form in the Clarence Thomas case. Some conservatives still won’t admit that every objective indication is that Anita Hill was telling the truth (just watch this comment thread for proof of that).

The question is raised, what kind of sexual indiscretion troubles conservatives? First of all, any one committed by a Democrat, that’s pretty clear. Second, any man-on-man stuff appears to induce the willies. Larry Craig, the Idaho senator famous for wide-stancing it at the Minneapolis airport in 2007, crossed a clear line. Florida Congressman Mark Foley ditto, although those allegations included his fondness for underage boys, which added a clear legal twist.

Among heterosexual Republicans, the record is mixed.