From the very start, I was never sure how to feel about the Co-ed Naked Zumba thing unfolding in Kennebunk. It’s not that I feared I may be on the list, mind you. I can’t afford gas to get to Kennebunk, let alone the cost of the … you know: dance lessons.

Most of us don’t have connections in Kennebunk, yet there it is, this smug fascination with the idea of who is doing what and to whom. It happened in Lewiston in the 1990s when the massage parlors got taken down one by one. It happens during the prostitution stings, too. Johns get arrested and we display their names in neat, bulleted lists along with mugshots if we can get our hands on them.

Priests get nabbed and we all talk about the sanctimony of the church. Teachers get revealed as street-crawling lechers and we gasp with shock and (let’s be honest) righteous glee. Cops are accused of breaking laws they are supposed to uphold and we tsk-tsk-tsk and ask each other: Who can we trust?

And the tsk-tsking is never quiet. There are always plenty of self-righteous souls standing on the sidewalks, pointing their sinless fingers and screaming, “Fornicators!” at every available opportunity, as though these are puritan times and we still stamp scarlet letters on the foreheads of sinners.

All of this over what is known in legal circles as “Doing the Nasty.” Men have been paying women for affection since the development of genitalia — oldest profession in the book and all of that. And yet we still gasp with titillated shock when a movie star gets caught paying for it. Or a neighbor, a friend or a businessman.

People who don’t know a single person in Kennebunk awaited the release of The List with the kind of giddy anticipation normally reserved for blockbuster movies or the Super Bowl. Here once more is a chance for us to take the moral high ground. We’ve never employed the service of a hooker ourselves and thus, we can declare that we are better than at least 150 people who were caught dancing in a horizontal fashion.

The trouble is the hypocrisy — the people who scream the loudest with moral indignation may very well have their own filthy little secrets — nasty habits or lurid histories they’ve manage to keep hidden with a little effort and a lot of luck.

Sex under the guise of wholesome family fitness is pretty ugly (or very ugly, depending on the quality of the video) but somehow, the reaction to it among the pious can grow even uglier.

I suppose there are people in the world who are truly without sin, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never met one.

But, hey, look at me getting all righteous about righteousness. When that complete list is released (I wonder if they’ll use quality paper and a really nice font) I’ll be there slobbering over it with the rest of you. Who got caught? How will this affect their lives? Will the video be available in stores or online?

And I won’t bust my back trying to defend anybody on the list, either. There’s a temptation to deem prostitution a “victimless crime” but that’s mostly bunk. People who indulge in the pay-for-sex trade may bring disease home to unsuspecting spouses. A lot of that cash-for-coitus money is used to fund the local drug trade. There are plenty of ways in which the illegal booty business can affect the rest of us.

Yet the illegal component isn’t the entirety of the public absorption with a case like this. People get equally bound up when others are revealed to have frequented swingers clubs, strip joints or sex parties. They’re all consenting adults and no laws were broken, but it’s sex and it’s unconventional and so it must be talked about in haughty, better-than-thou tones.

Two adages come to mind. One is, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

The other? “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”

The people named on that list have to be enduring an agony of anticipation right now. Each and every day, sitting at the breakfast table with their loved ones, sweating over their bacon and eggs (there’s a metaphor in there if you look real hard) and wondering if today will be the day their lives fall apart.

Do you feel sorry for them? Or are you of the opinion that if you do the Kennebunk Two-Step, eventually you have to pay the deejay?

So, while I was just putting the final touches on this windy column, two people wrote me on Facebook and a few more sent text messages. Did you hear? They’ve begun to release The List over there in Kennebunk.

This very moment, people are dropping what they were doing to turn their attention to this business of sex, Zumba and videotape. And I can’t rid myself of the feeling that this is probably the way people reacted back in 1692 Salem, Mass., when each day meant a new accusation of witchery.

Is my neighbor a witch? Is the woman who sews my shirts or the man who sells me corn?

Absolute public fascination with the private lives of others, it’s as powerful a human urge as the drive for sex that started this whole thing. To me, the ugliness transcends the criminal aspect. To me, our eagerness to ostracize others is as repellent as anything those people did in dusty back rooms to the sound of Zumba music blasted at full volume.

But, hey. I’m as human as you are and curiosity is not easily suppressed. As soon as I write the final words here, I’m off to read that list of names and to gasp where appropriate.

Let the lynchings begin.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. Sinners can email him at mlaflamme@sunjournal.com.

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