Daily News from New York, New York • 43

Bill could never figure on an outcome like this L'Affaire Rudy: Reaction shows a mature public. SIDNEY ZION RICHARD COHEN MY VERY good friend Leonora Hornblow allowed as how Mayor Giuliani finally looks human. "Yeah, the prostate," I said. "Not the prostate, the girlfriend!" I expected something like that from Leonora, easily the sawiest broad in town. She is the widow of the great Hollywood producer Arthur Horn-blow Jr.

for the and she scandal and yet Rudy kept bombing the media. What are we to make of this? "The New York press was exactly right in leaving Rudy and his girl alone," Leonora says. "Remember, it was the Washington media that got all upset about Bill and Monica. And they were all wet, they had no connection with the people. They kept saying Clinton would be impeached.

I hope they are the THE BEST show in New York these days is New York itself. On the one hand, the city mourns the death of Cardinal O'Connor remembered by almost everyone as a great spiritual leader. On the other, the city has been riveted by the news that Mayor Giuliani is having a relationship of some kind with a comely woman most definitely not his wife. If there's an inconsistency here, no one seems to notice. self immune from punitive moralism because he is a mayor who, as with Clinton, is widely held to have performed well.

Just what O'Connor would have made of all this is, of course, impossible to say but possible to guess. He might have recognized that for all his prestige and popularity, his moral authority was limited. The cardinal could instruct, but no longer command. It's hard to envision him ized La-La Land in its halcyon days when on a Saturday night in Chas-en's she cast an eye on the joint and proclaimed: "Look at these bastards here with their wives and the poor girls are all alone by the telephone." What surprises me is that her view of denouncing the mayor for lax morality. Those days are gone.

Only the congressional GOP talks that way. All this is for the better. It's harder now to conceive of any politician being ruined strictly on account of a private relation- In fact, almost no one thinks it matters much. A Daily News poll found that 77 of respondents considered the mayor's new relationship a private matter that would have no effect on how they "view Giuliani as a Senate candidate." Only 12 said it made them think "more negatively" of Giuliani. Just exactly where this moral minority is going to go is hard to say.

Giuliani's senatorial opponent is Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is either living with her husband, or is not. At the moment, they have two homes, one in Washington and one in Chappaqua. Only the former is open to tours. Never before in all of history (I have looked this up) has there been a Senate race between two married people who, from all appearances, are maritally challenged. Never before has there been a Senate race in which it is presumed or known that both candidates are in marriages where the party of the first part has, on occasion, been with the party of the third part.

For people who maintain that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans, this is the clincher. It is proof of something else as well. Once again, we have all been instructed on the public's ability to separate the relevant from the irrelevant. This streak last bastion of Puritanism. She is a smoker, so she knows better, but before I let her go, I had to have her explain why "very good friend" did not mean mistress in the good old days.

"It's simple," she said. "Marion Davies was William Randolph Hearst's "great, good friend. A very good friend was your Aunt Minnie's kid." If this explains why Mrs. Hornblow was smart enough to turn me down, it leaves many open questions vis-a-vis the media's reaction to Bill and Monica vs. Rudy and Judi.

Clinton was smashed for not telling the truth about his Oval Office affection with Monica. "It's not the sex, it's the lie," said the Republicans, and so cried the media. Rudy stands up and doesn't deny it, and it's okay because it's sex but not the lie. Cole Porter died too soon. It's not that good's bad today, it's that bad's good today so long as a confession follows the fold.

Say it isn't so is the sin. Admit, and you're part of the new world you have grace, and all former and future sins are absolved. This is not the world Rudy was born into, nor the world he promoted. He has been the hot hand of conservatism, the judge and jury of those who believed that anything goes. So Rudy puts it out there in front as no other politician ever has, and the city says, "Who cares?" Bill Clinton never figured on this.

He did what every husband has done he lied. Because every husband in history knew that the truth would put your clothes in the yard. The press, which Rudy believes hates him, did him a favor. By covering up Judi, they helped Rudy. And if you want a conspiracy theory, they did it to make sure he wouldn't look human.

Not the prostate, the girlfriend. ft QCm y' WeJL of common sense came as a total shock to the Republicans in Washington when they tried to remove President Clinton JIM WILUS DAILY NEWS PHOTO ILLUSTRATION Rudy's romance speaks the consensus. "How do you feel about being mainstream?" I asked my very good friend. "Great! It shows the country has grown up. A guy's got to have a doll.

What worried me was the thought that he didn't have one and was understandably cranky and mean because of the cold front Donna Hanover laid on him, pardon my expression." President Clinton bombed Sudan minutes after the media took Monica Lewinsky away. The media protected Rudy and Judi Nathan for at least a year. from office for what most people saw as ship. It's harder still for journalists and others to mouth the simple-minded mantra that a person who cheats on a spouse will cheat on his country. All we can now say with certainty is that sometimes that's the case, and sometimes it's not.

The apparent contradiction of a city that sincerely mourns its pious archbishop but fails to condemn its unconventional mayor is not a cynical accommodation to hypocrisy. It is, instead, an acknowledgment that life is complicated and the distinction between good and bad is not as clear as we once thought. That is not cynicism. It is, instead, humility. a private matter.

It's not that the public approved of what Clinton did, it just that it seemed irrelevant to the job at hand running the country. He seemed to be doing a pretty good job of that. Giuliani must have been keeping an eye on Clinton. He has proclaimed him- Religious freedom under fire JOHN LEO UFTS University in Med-ford, is punishing a campus evangelical group for refusing to allow practicing homosexuals into its leadership positions. A student tribunal, the Tufts Community Union Judiciary, voted to derecognize the Tufts Christian Fellowship.

This and concluded that homosexual practice is compatible with Scripture. She wanted a leadership role next year, but the group said it cannot have a leader who does not share its religious beliefs. The group says it supports Catalano and does not want to expel her. In fact, the fellowship has said many times that it welcomes all students. The issue isn't sexual orientation, but the right to select leaders who support the group's core beliefs.

Religious groups have to decide their own beliefs, not buckle to a campus-approved theology. In effect, the student tribunal is now in the business of pressuring a group to deny its own reading of Scripture. means that the evangelicals won't be able to reserve rooms for meetings, publicize events in campus listings or even use bulletin boards. They are forbidden to use the Tufts name and will lose their share of student activity monies doled out to all student groups, some $5,700 a year. Hillel would have to accept leaders who say the Holocaust never happened.

More immediately, if administrators or courts don't step in to restore sanity, many religious groups across the country will become vulnerable. Catholics, Muslims, Orthodox Jews and Pentecost als, as well as evangelicals, do not approve of homosexuality. In 1997, Grinnell College in Iowa became the first campus to penalize an evangelical group for not allowing homosexual leaders. The group has been derecog-nized and defunded, though it is still allowed to meet and worship on campus. Middlebury College in Vermont is in the midst of a similar controversy.

New anti-bias language in the student handbook says that no student may be eliminated from being considered for leadership of any campus group because of beliefs or identity. And at Whitman College in Washington State, an evangelical group is under fire because a student bylaw says groups are not allowed to consider one sexual orientation superior to another. In the wake of publicity about Tufts, Middlebury and Whitman, other colleges presumably will use similar tactics against campus evangelicals. The broader problem is that the politically correct left now relies far more on coercion than on persuasion or moral appeal. The long-term trend is to depict dissent from the gay agenda as a form of illegitimate and punishable expression.

Will the leaders of the gay-rights movement please speak a little more clearly about freedom of speech and freedom of religion? One administrator was quoted as telling the group, "I Campuses are pressuring groups to deny their beliefs don't mean to get dramatic or anything, but essentially, on the Tufts campus, you do not exist." At a late-night meeting that the evangelicals were not told about, the judiciary tribunal decided, without a hearing, that the fellowship was violating campus anti-discrimination policy by not allowing Julie Catal- ano, a bisexual member of the group, into a leadership position next year. The fellowship says it knew that Catalano had been "exploring her sexuality" when she The fellowship has appealed the decision, but last week the new policy took hold: The fellowship's 20-member Bible study group at Capen House, an African-American house, was unable to reserve a room and couldn't meet. If this precedent means that no group can deny a leadership position on the basis of beliefs, then scientific groups would have to accept flat-Earth leaders and joined the group three years ago, but she accepted the group's teaching on homosexuality and apparently had no trouble with it. This spring, however, she revealed she was bisexual.