The story of Iris Robinson came as a gift to the media: judgemental, “fanatical”, homophobic Christian politician jumps into bed with a teenager, showering their affair with cash from the public purse. How easy to judge, how easy to laugh, how easy to condemn. But perhaps we need to take a step back and consider the story in a slightly more measured way, thinking of facts rather than emotion.

There are very much two parts to the story. First is the mountain of cash she helpfully provided for a cushion in her love nest, allowing her young friend to set up in business. And then there is the other, totally irrelevant part of the story; her personal religious and moral convictions. Exactly what is the importance of these views when considering her skewed beneficence – how do they relate to the story? They don’t; this is just a chance for the liberal mainstream media to have a go, once again, at someone they consider a ‘moral disgrace’. But her morals aren’t the point. She acted wrongly in her job as a politician and she has resigned. Her husband may have helped her; he has voluntarily suspended his position as First Minister. But she stood, and was elected, to two governing bodies while openly expressing her moral ideas. Seeking to destroy her using them as a weapon is an affront to this country’s democratic system.

The crime that Robinson committed was being judgemental; her opinions decisively put certain groups of people at a disadvantage. Her views on gays are repugnant to the liberal establishment, but should that stop her having them? We’re all guilty of being judgemental in our own way, in accordance with our own ideals. Instead of a witch hunt by the liberal moral police, we need a reasoned debate about these issues, away from the hysterical outrage whipped up by the sensationalist media. An affair is a private matter, and although the financial issues surrounding this relationship are disgraceful, to use this to judge a woman on her moral standards is at best cheap and at worst actively damaging.

And if we are totally honest, the main reason the media jump on this ‘condemn at all costs’ band-wagon is because they fear what would happen if they did not. They see the BNP’s massive rise in support in recent years as the likely outcome of their silence. Whatever you argue the reason for this increased support is, the votes are very real, and racist bigots like the BNP really are making inroads into mainstream politics. And the argument that people don’t know what the party really stands for doesn’t work – BNP members are honest about what they think, what they believe in, and who they would actively seek to root out and discriminate against if they achieved the unthinkable: power.

But Robinson did not stand with her moral views as an electoral selling point, and this is not why she hit the headlines to start with. If there really was a level of public discontent and disgust with what she holds dear, then surely the public would have voted against her, or at least actively campaigned against her illiberalism. But they haven’t. They voted for her, and, by normal, politically acceptable rules, her husband, also now demonised as a dog of the right, became leader of the top party in Northern Ireland. Never before was it possible to attack him with such vigour, on such a personal basis, for his personal views.

The lie that is now presented to us is that those who seek public office should suspend their personal religious and moral views. There is at least one politician a year who has some kind of kinky sex scandal, keeping the ravenous public excited and eager for more. But why do we have such an obsession with something which, were these events to affect us individually, we would far prefer to keep private, even from our closest friends? It’s a cruel and uncivilised population that stops people having any form of privacy, when they are, after all, working for us as public servants. If our politicians’ personal views affect our policy and are not representative, then we have every right to complain – but for those like Robinson, whose views were forthrightly and honestly exclaimed before her election, who are we, the voters, to protest? Perhaps it’s just a very British delight in seeing others, especially those in the public eye, fail.

Robinson was foolish. She relished every opportunity to criticize, despite being the lead actor in her own erotic stageplay. One small bit of advice for Iris, and all those who do choose to pontificate about how people should behave in their private lives, whilst barely being clean themselves: don’t seduce them, Mrs Robinson, and expect to get away with it.