This harassment thing seems to be everywhere

Two more television-world figures have been confronted with enough credible allegations that they have had to own up to sexual-harassment behavior: news-andcommentary guy Mark Halperin and Nickelodeon producer Chris Savino.

Again I say, there is no training program in the world that is going to put a stop to this.

It has to begin with recognizing the architecture of this universe, with forthrightly acknowledging that there is a male nature and a female nature, and that acting as if the workplace is some kind of zone where that fact doesn't apply is engaging in reality-denial.

Then, there has to be respect for what He who did the designing instructed us regarding how to exist in accordance with these distinct and unchanging natures.

I remember when I was a teenager in the 1970s, and a girl in our neighborhood who was drinking the second-wave feminist Kool-Aid, and who was also attractive, made a point of wearing tube tops and then telling the neighborhood boys that they were sexist pigs for gawking at her. She had not thought the entire matter out well enough to realize that she was demanding the impossible, I'm quite sure. She hadn't gone any deeper with it than the level of copping an attitude.

But that, writ large, is what is being insisted on today.

Mind you, this is not to say that the behavior of Savino, Halperin, Weinstein, O'Reilly, Bolling, Ailes et al is acceptable. It's just to say that all of us dealing with this like grownups means acknowledging the tension implicit in professional interactions between a male of any age or shape and an attractive female.

This tension had always been acknowledged, and celebrated for the delightful spice it added to life in general in the Hollywood romantic comedies of yore, in the lyrics of popular music prior to the last 30 years, and in the sonnets and other poems of past centuries. But this denial of the the dualistic way human nature is designed necessitated rules and training programs that were cold and sad. It also, like water finding the path of least resistance, made for an ever-more-tawdry and even threatening expression of basic male energy.

I suppose the shorthand version of what's required - that guys ought to grow up and conduct themselves around women in a respectful manner - works well enough, but it seems to me that ultimately, the recognition that God deemed these things to be the way they are is going to have to enter the picture. For one thing, the assurance of grace is going to be needed for those inevitable situations where guys cross the line to even a subtle degree.