Let’s Talk About Fidelity For A Change It Doesn’t Make Headlines, But Many Do Stay True

Frank Gifford, Kelly Flinn, Joseph Ralston, Eddie Murphy, Michael Kennedy, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Enough with all the same-old, same-old news, gossip and innuendo about adultery.

In the interest of equal time, let’s pause now for a few words on a subject that gets about as much attention as every commercial jetliner that doesn’t crash.

Yes, we’re talking fidelity.

It is, to be sure, a right and good topic. It is not, however, an easy topic, especially considering what the Bible says about fidelity: a lot less than you’d expect.

Sure, there’s old No. 7 on God’s top 10 list (see Exodus). But once you get past all the Bible’s “thou shalt nots,” there’s really not a vivid portrayal of good role models, says theologian John Holbert.

“The Bible is a book that mirrors our activity and behavior,” says Holbert, a professor at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology. “David, for example, breaks five commandments in just one chapter. They (who wrote the Bible) want to make sure no one gets confused about who is God and who is not.”

OK, OK. If you must have an example from the Bible, Holbert suggests the Song of Solomon. “It’s a description of a very equal and sexual relationship between a man and a woman,” he says. “What makes it interesting and remarkable is it really is an ancient relationship, and the author captures a relationship of pure equality.”

However, Holbert says, “there is some question that they’re talking about married people. And my own feeling is it wasn’t a married couple.”

So, if the Bible isn’t bursting at the seams with descriptions of faithful spouses, it does make you wonder why there aren’t more writings about fidelity: Because nobody wants to read them, says author, poet and essayist Wendell Berry.

“The ideal isn’t very interesting,” says Berry, who has made his career writing about community and human relationships. “I don’t think it’s any accident that you don’t have, in the great works, stories of ideal marriages. There just isn’t a story there.”

That said, Berry also is the author of a 1992 book titled “Fidelity.” It’s a collection of short stories about people who feel a strong sense of what is right.

It hasn’t hit the best-seller list.

Berry is undisturbed. There are worse things than writing against the popular grain.

Glamorizing adultery, for instance, and rationalizing divorce.

“The basic expectation is that people do what they say they’re going to do,” he says. “The traditional marriage vow is that you make some promises.

“If you say those things and don’t mean them, it’s a very serious sort of delinquency. If you give your word and don’t live up to it, what does that mean?

“The issue of divorce doesn’t just apply to marriage. People are breaking their word all over the place. People are saying things and not minding at all to break them.”

Which makes you wonder….

Indeed, isn’t fidelity a little too much to expect of the men who have been elected our presidents?

Not necessarily. Believe it or not, “presidential marital fidelity” is not an oxymoron. Probably no other president in American history has faced the strain and peril that Abraham Lincoln endured.

And yet, says historian Lewis Gould, his bond with Mary Todd Lincoln is “kind of the presidential marriage of all time.”

“It’s pretty evident that she loved him and he loved her,” says Gould, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin who edited the reference book “American First Ladies.”

“He was infinitely tolerant of her, and she provided the greatest sustenance to him.”

Unfortunately, Mary Todd Lincoln’s reputation has not worn as well as her husband’s over the years. Gould says it’s a bum rap.

“She had some mental difficulties after the war,” he says, “but if one looks at the situation - how many of her children die (three of four sons), then to see her husband assassinated before her very eyes, then all the hateful material about her role as first lady - I think it would have broken the spirit of anybody.”

It’s not hard for Gould to name other presidents untainted by the slightest evidence of infidelity. Among those in this century, he says, are Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter.

And what about Richard Nixon? He might have had Watergate, but wasn’t he at least a faithful husband?

“He betrayed his wife in other ways,” says Gould.

“In 1960, he said, ‘I won’t run again,’ and he did. He’d tell her, ‘I want your advice,’ and he’d already made up his mind.”

Which does go to show that fidelity is more than the absence of adultery. If you don’t understand this point, then A.C. Green will explain it to you.

For the past several years, the basketball pro, who now plays for the Dallas Mavericks, has led a foundation dedicated to promoting Christian principles, including premarital abstinence, among athletes.

“I think fidelity is the strongest covenant a person can give to another,” says the 33-year-old athlete. “There’s a bond, a commitment. You’re able to know the oneness that so many of us have always wanted to experience.”

By the way, Green is proud to say he has never betrayed his wife, and as far as he knows, he hasn’t even met her yet.

Still single, he says he has always practiced what he’s preached.

“I do all my running and chasing on the basketball court,” he says, “but I know, of course, there will be a point in time when I will find that woman, and I will be able to practice these things in my life.

“Until that time, I don’t want to compromise and settle with second best.”

Now that’s fidelity.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Faithful Celebrity marriages that have endured: Paul and Linda McCartney Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson