Today at noon, Eliot Spitzer’s resignation becomes official.  As I noted in an earlier post, a CEO could be fired for the embarrassment caused by this sort of situation, even if there is no crime.  Governor Spitzer has been effectively fired.  Time will tell as to what else happens to him.

For more than a week, we’ve heard this development called startling, stunning, breathtaking.  We’ve asked or been asked:  “How could he have done this?  What would cause someone to risk so much?  Why does this kind of thing keep happening?”  We’ve heard Spitzer described as disgraced, a hypocrite, an arrogant son of privilege who thought he was above the law.

We’ve been lectured by psychobabblers who’ve talked about the link between power and sex,  the sense of entitlement a powerful politician enjoys, the feeling of invincibility many people of power can’t avoid, the abandon that comes over the powerful causing them to grasp crazy risks and take thrill-seeking to a new and dangerous level.

We’ve been compelled to revisit the lives of those who have committed similar transgressions.  Presidents:  Jefferson, Harding, Roosevelt (Franklin), Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Clinton.  And those are the ones we know about.  Other public figures: Jim Bakker, Bob Barr, Gary Condit, Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Gary Hart, Edward Kennedy, James McGreevey, Wilbur Mills, Bob Packwood, Chuck Robb, Jimmy Swaggart, Strom Thurmond, David Vitter.  And that’s the short list.  Most of the above weren’t accused of hiring prostitutes, just having inappropriate sexual dalliances.  Some were able to survive.  Others went the way of Spitzer, who had no chance at all of surviving given his rectitudinal pursuit of the slightest ethical breach, a prostitution ring, or the multi-million dollar fraud.  

While some cultures throughout the world permit polygamy, adultery and prostitution, our culture doesn’t.  Our culture and our laws are greatly influenced by the so-called Judeo-Christian ethic that is largely based on the Bible.  In Genesis 2:24, God says: “A man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.”  A fair reading of this statement would seem to be that the marriage of two people is sacrosanct.  Yet by Genesis 4:19, “Lamech took two wives.”  And things spiraled out of control from there. 

Biblical heros like Abraham, Jacob, and David had multiple wives. (David took one of his wives, Bathsheba, by murdering her first husband–without his kingship being toppled.)  Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines.  While I know some would argue this point since the Bible condemns prostitution from beginning to end, it seems to me that concubines were pretty much prostitutes who weren’t relegated to evening only sessions with their men.  Given God’s seemingly unequivocal statement about marriage in Genesis 2, one would think that an explanation would follow about why God permitted otherwise.  But there isn’t, unless you count what Jesus said in Matthew 19 and Mark 10: “For your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” 

Although addressing divorce and not multiple spouses, concubines or prostitutes, perhaps Jesus is saying that God cut men some slack back in the days of Moses because they weren’t able to live up to the Genesis 2 principle.  Of course, Jesus goes on to make it clear that Genesis 2 is again the law, that adultery is a sin, and that men need to shape up.  He even says in Matthew 5:27-28 that if a man lusts after a woman in his heart, he commits adultery, which I suppose means that Jimmy Carter should be added to the presidents of sexual infamy.

All this brings me to the title of this post.  I’m inclined to believe there’s a man gene, for lack of a better, or more scientifically accurate, term.  It’s a gene that makes men desire sex–above all else sometimes.  It’s a gene that makes men take maniacal chances and be unable to consider the consequences at the time.  It has nothing to do with power, arrogance, entitlement, or invincibility.  It has to do with sex.  You think the shoe salesman with a wife and three kids who pays $100 for a hooker is on a power trip?  You think the mid-level manager who goes out of town on business and hooks up with a slightly more expensive prostitute is showing his arrogance?  They’re doing exactly what Spitzer was doing.  They just can’t pay as much.  The man gene doesn’t discriminate between the powerful man and the normal man.  It is intoxicating and virulent.  It is satisfying and humiliating.  Most men struggle with the man gene every day.  Few are able to conquer it–at least, in an absolute way.  So Spitzer’s offense is hardly startling, stunning, or breathtaking.

When the man gene mutates, terrible things happen.  And I’m not talking about paying for sex or gawking at cleavage or lusting in one’s heart.  But sexual assault, stalking, hitting on women in bars or in church, sexual harassment at work, rape.  And if you look at the big picture, you see an even darker side.  Child prostitution, women being bought in other countries and brought to the U.S. as sex slaves, prostitutes being battered by their pimps and johns, the ultimate demeaning of women.

Men are told that when the man gene starts becoming uncontrollable, you should think of another woman as your mother, your spouse, your sister, your daughter.  That’s powerful advice.  And it works, but not always.  Governor Spitzer is the latest high profile person to demonstrate that.  And while the Spitzer circus has been unfolding, how many thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of similar incidents have occurred involving men who’ve heard all about Spitzer but let the man gene get the best of them?

This is another subject you can’t talk about–not without tempers flaring, hostile accusations being made, misunderstood statements abounding, vicious labels attaching to anyone who chances honesty.  It would be interesting (and I think helpful but admittedly risky) for a bold Chief Executive Officer, Senior Vice President of Human Resources, or Chief Diversity Officer to lead employees in a discussion of this subject, first with a small group and, depending on how it goes, with a larger group.  It just might help the sexes work together better and cause a united front against the sexual harassment that still happens way too often. 

I’m not an apologist for Governor Spitzer or anyone else, great or small, who does what he did.  I don’t condone for a minute sexual harassment in the workplace or elsewhere.  The exploitation of women in the so-called sex trade is one of the most deplorable things on the face of the earth.  But I am a man and, thus, afflicted with the man gene.  And even though I’m older now (which helps), I still do battle with the man gene and confess that I always feel a little sorry for the man brought down by the gene’s power. 

I’m hoping Jesus was using hyperbole or stating that you won’t run the risk of Spitzer’s sin if you don’t think about it first or encouraging men to prevent the man gene’s urges from becoming all-consuming when he said that lusting in your heart after a woman is tantamount to adultery.  I’m hoping that, in the day of judgment (however literal or figurative that may be), men are cut some slack like they were in Moses’ time.  If not, I fear that most of us are, if you’ll forgive my language, screwed.