LISTEN to almost any sophisticated pundit on the Lewinsky affair and the first words you will hear are: ``It's not the sex . . .''

This is a phrase with a history. Thirty-four years ago Harold Wilson, seeking to exploit the Profumo affair in a high-minded way, came up with the line: ``It's not the sex, it's the security risk.'' (The security risk in question was that Christine Keeler was sleeping with the British Minister for War and a Soviet military attaché -- so sex hardly came into the matter at all.)

If it's not the sex, however, then what is it? Echoing Watergate, the most common explanation in the Lewinsky affair is: ``It's not the sex, it's the cover-up.'' Or to get technical: ``It's the lying.'' Or ``It's the suborning of perjury.''

The obvious snag with the principle thus stated is that, assuming the allegations to be true, Bill Clinton was covering up only because he guessed that an affair with a subordinate less than half his age would be regarded as morally shameful. If Mr. Clinton had confessed all, people would not have said ``Ho, hum.'' The public would have denounced the press and bought the papers. There would have been a fiesta of prurience and moral condemnation.

Scandals are the litmus tests of morality. They tell us what we instinctively feel about moral questions, which is not always what we say we say in public statements.

How come? America is no longer united by a broad moral consensus. Victorian respectability -- equal parts of Christian prohibition, prudence, and fear of one's neighbor -- provided millions of people with a kind of moral ready-reckoner for almost 150 years. It had its critics. But as Samuel Butler pointed out, those who criticized it as a tepid imitation of real virtue were generally the same people who found it too exacting for their own lives.

The acid of the Sixties, however, dissolved respectability along with much else. Public morality has fragmented into a dozen different moral visions as feminists, evangelical Christians, the media class, talk-show hosts, and Internet nerds all advance their own agendas. Underneath this superficial Babel, however, the habits and instincts of respectability linger on -- and bubble up whenever a scandal comes along.

The problem is that every would-be public morality has a different punchline. The modern political class, for whom tolerance is the only virtue, would like to say, ``It's not the sex, it's the tabloids.'' On this view, private sexual behavior, however bizarre, can never be a scandal. It is simply an aspect of ``human nature.'' The real scandal is the tabloids -- the vanguard of public prurience (itself a pejorative description of respectability). Shoot the messenger and all will be well.

Of course, that is wishful thinking. For curiosity and gossip are aspects of human nature too. When Jay Leno can joke on late-night television that ``Al Gore is just an orgasm away from the Presidency,'' tabloids are not needed to whip up public interest. Private sins beyond a certain point -- say, one respectable adultery per decade -- become a legitimate matter of public interest because they make the Presidency a laughingstock.

The higher journalists take refuge in the argument, ``It's not the sex, it's the hypocrisy.'' Just as tolerance is the only virtue elevated by agnostic liberalism, so is hypocrisy the only sin it really condemns -- and, surely not coincidentally, more damaging to conservatives who want to promote virtue at least in theory than to liberals. Hence, when the televangelists Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker were caught with hookers, the media covered their ``hypocrisy'' on page one and at length.

Feminists so far have been uncharacteristically silent. Yet there is an obvious feminist interpretation to hand, namely: ``It's not the sex, it's the womanizing.'' That would be taking the personal politically, and it also would please the lesbians in their ranks by helping to cut out the competition for girls. But the dirty little secret of feminists is that even the butchest of them likes a womanizer who votes right.

Sen. Packwood's method of courtship was to grab the nearest girl and stick his tongue in her ear. It was cheap (no meals, no flowers), efficient (no time-wasting ``she loves me, she loves me not''), productive (a reasonable rate of sexual returns), and politically costless: as long as Packwood voted for abortion, no feminist stopped him. Even the molestees closed their eyes and thought of Roe v. Wade.

Now, Mr. Clinton protects not just abortion, but abortion even when the baby is three-quarters delivered. So the feminists remain quiet and, if cornered, will reply: ``It's not the sex, it's the infanticide (that makes us love him so).''

Middle America is caught between respectability and talk-show culture. The dumbed-down liberalism of Oprah, Geraldo, etc., demands incidental reasons for disapproving of even the most baroque sexual practices. Hence Middle America mumbles, ``It's not the sex, it's the age thing.'' Mr. Clinton took advantage of a young innocent.

The problem here is not that Miss Lewinsky is not innocent; it is that almost no 21-year-old is. Any intern today has had 12 to 15 years of explicit sex education, AIDS awareness campaigns, and instruction in every possible use of the condom. Teenagers are not warned by schools against predatory adults; they are sent out equipped to party. Many could teach Mr. Clinton a thing or two.

And he may need instruction. Rumors have him assuring Miss Lewinsky that, according to the Bible, oral sex is not adultery. Jimmy Carter confessed to adultery because he committed it in his heart; Bill Clinton denies adultery because he committed it in his chair. Or: ``It's not the sex -- because it's not really sex.''

Almost everyone feels dimly that if Bill Clinton had sex with Monica Lewinsky, he behaved recklessly and shamefully. Modern culture has deprived us of the moral vocabulary in which to express such feelings, forcing us to rely on secondary legal or political arguments. The first step to recovering a moral vocabulary is to tell the next sophisticated pundit (or European): ``It's the sex, stupid.''

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