Secret lives no surprise

Gail Rosenblum, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune

Published July 30, 2007 at midnight

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If the story of Sen. David Vitter sounds like déjà vu, that's probably because it is. This month the Louisiana senator, with his wife at his side, offered "sincere apologies" to those he had hurt after being linked to an escort service in Washington.

Vitter, who has campaigned largely on "family values," delivered his mea culpa just eight months after the Rev. Ted Haggard, senior pastor of the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs and a vocal critic of gay rights, admitted to "sexual immorality" and buying illegal drugs and a massage from a former male prostitute.

So it's hard not to wonder what's going on here. What makes people, especially public people, fight so hard against the cesspool they can't seem to stay out of themselves? If you're cavorting with a hooker, for example, couldn't your public battle cry be something like manatee preservation? Not so simple, say those who observe the complexities of human behavior on a daily basis.

"It strikes others as bizarre, that people are so much one way in their public presentation and have these secret private lives, but I've seen so many people with secret lives and stories," said Walter Bera, a Minneapolis therapist.

Those secret lives, he and others say, are lived out by both women and men across all party lines and professions, from teachers to doctors to religious leaders to supervolunteers.

"I'm not sure it's any more prevalent (among the rich and famous) than in any other group of people, but it's so incongruous that when it happens it becomes news," says Michael Miner, psychologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota's Center for Sexual Health.

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