BOB ABERNETHY: Now Perspectives -- on the ethical questions raised by this week's sensational allegations that the President of the United States had an affair with a 21-year-old White House intern and then encouraged her to commit perjury by lying about the relationship under oath. The president denies the charges completely. We don't yet know the full story. But until we know more, how to react? Nancy Sherman is a professor of ethics at Georgetown University and the U.S. Naval Academy. Robert George is a professor of politics at Princeton University, a constitutional lawyer, and a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. And Philip Wogaman, a senior minister of Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, where President and Mrs. Clinton worship. Dr. Wogaman is also a Christian ethicist.

Dr. Wogaman, you've preached to the Clintons. You know them. As you watch all this unfold, what seems most important to you as their pastor?

Dr. PHILIP WOGAMAN (Foundry United Methodist Church): Well, I know them as good people. What's most important to me is for the country not to react in an hysterical way about this and to keep a broad sense of all of the ethical values that may be at stake here and definitely not to rush to judgment.

Professor NANCY SHERMAN (Georgetown University): I think we need to link together in our minds the allegations of suborning perjury and possible allegations of adultery. If they're true, then they're linked in a sense that they're both at -- they're both expressions of lying or deceit which, I think, means that there's a little moral seepage here. The notion of perjury is an obstruction of justice. In the public sphere, it seeps into action in the private sphere. They're not totally disintegrated, and there's a lack of moral integrity if we try to separate them. And just one third point -- this is the commander in chief of the nation. Talking to military people, they certainly are thinking about the charges as an infraction of the role of being at the head of a chain of command where our information can reliably be sent and be trusted.

ABERNETHY: Do you think he has lost stature and the ability to perform as commander in chief because of this week's allegations?

Prof. SHERMAN: I think there's some, especially since it's in the area of abuse of power toward women -- if these charges are correct.

ABERNETHY: Professor George, what about this business of separating parts of our lives? What do you make of that?

Professor ROBERT GEORGE (Princeton University): Nancy Sherman is exactly right about this, and she's flying in the face of what's become in a sort of established orthodoxy among the elite segment of our culture -- the idea that it's a sign of moral maturity when people don't take adultery seriously in public officials, but take perjury seriously or suborning perjury seriously. She's right that a person cannot divide his life into those two segments. Rather, integrity is a matter of integrating the different aspects of one's life into a harmonious whole. You can't be a good person in one sphere of life and a bad person in another and expect that that won't have an effect, an eroding effect on character in the areas in which one has so far been able to behave oneself well.

ABERNETHY: Dr. Wogaman, what about that, this dividing or compartmentalizing judgments?

Dr. WOGAMAN: Well, of course, this is all right. One doesn't want to compartmentalize values and moral attitudes. But we're all sinners. There isn't anybody who's perfect. And I would caution people not to weigh the sexual as though it were the only aspect of morality. There are very important issues of justice and human rights and world peace and other things which are probably even more important.