Hellfire and damnation: another victim, in the tumescent person of the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, for the howling media lynch mob. The public's forbearance must surely strain its limits at the sight of yet another private life so recklessly exposed to view. If this keeps up it could scare off good people from becoming TV evangelists.

Still and still and still again the issue of personal morality in public life returns. With each disclosure, each inquiry, each resignation and dismissal, the same questions arise: What is unacceptable private behavior for those in whom the public trust is placed? How much should we all be told about it, regardless? And who should be subject to such scrutiny?

The last one's easiest: politicians, and those who share their lives. Open season on private lives should not begin the moment someone enters public sight, as if a deer had stumbled into the wrong clearing in the forest. It is not clear, for instance, that much purpose was served by the dissection and humiliation of Terry Popowich, MSc, in the press last month, though it was no less enjoyable for all that.

But politicians, as distinct from other public figures, seek coercive power over the rest of us. Movie stars, chief executives, and newspaper columnists do not. The trust we give those who would govern is of a different order, so different standards of scrutiny should apply.

The real handwringing begins on the question of what should be revealed. Liberal Leader John Turner was asked on national television if he has a drinking problem. NDP MP Svend Robinson this week announced, on national television, that he is homosexual. The government's new conflict of interest bill would force all members of Parliament and their spouses to declare their assets, though it would be left to a commission to decide whether this, too, should be on national television. We are now, it seems, to be kept informed of a politician's investment strategies, sexual preferences, alcoholic intake, and beyond. Is this really what we want?

You bet. In an age of stringent regulations on product labeling and stock prospectuses, it is curious that the notion that the public is best served chilled in ignorance should survive in political matters. But you can already hear the whining in the outer reaches of the Tory back bench over the conflict of interest bill, while NDP leader Ed Broadbent firmly declares that a member's sexual orientation is his own business. Even outside Parliament, most commentators seemed personally wounded when the subject of Turner's drinking was broached.

For Canada, this is all very new. The U.S. has required full financial disclosure of its politicians for years. Such openly gay politicians as Massachusetts Rep. Gerry Studds are returned regularly to office; two presidential candidates, by the same token, had to withdraw after the press dug up damning details of their personal lives.

Until now, Canadians interpreted this distinction in our usual way: with insufferable smugness. Politics was held to be a more gentlemanly occupation here, and the reluctance of Canadian journalists to dirty their hands in such fashion, it was suggested, showed decent restraint. After the Gary Hart and Joe Biden fiascos, Peter Desbarats, dean of the University of Western Ontario's Graduate School of Journalism, urged that his colleagues not be lumped together with their rougher Yankee counterparts. Canadian journalism is characterized by ''politeness,'' he noted with evident satisfaction.

That this shows signs of changing is plainly disturbing to many in both professions. The CBC brought members of all three parties together to cluck worriedly on Peter Gzowski's program, former Liberal minister Eric Kierans wondering whether it all might have something to do with free trade.

In criminal law, the character of the defendant becomes an issue when the defence introduces it. Likewise, I'll believe a politician's private life is off-bounds when I stop receiving Best Wishes in This Holiday Season from Brian and Mila, John and Geills, or Ed and Lucille. If politicians can display the attractive side of their personal life to advantage, then the less savory features should also be fair game.

NICE DISTINCTIONS

In any event, recent experience should be enough to convince us that nice distinctions between private and public affairs don't wash. In Michel Cote's case, for instance, marital problems appear to have contributed importantly to his financial difficulties, and hence to violation of the ministerial code of conduct. Even without such tangible links, seemingly irrelevant personal details often speak of larger faults of terrible relevance. Mass democracy does not allow each voter to probe the candidates' inner core; the voters must instead peel layers at a time, and from each divine what lies beneath - a task in which they show some skill.

At base, the public-private distinction is grounded in a narrow, functionalist definition of the political calling. We do not elect programs, but people; not only administrators, but leaders. As such, their personal morality becomes an issue of itself. Leaders sum up who we are, and how we view ourselves, and therefore every aspect of their lives is as relevant as another. The politician who shrinks from that responsibility cannot call himself a leader.