I'm reminded of Chris Rock's line about the tiger that attacked his trainer in Las Vegas: "That Tiger ain't gone crazy. That tiger went tiger!"

Who knows what kind of understanding Tiger and his wife had concerning his extra-marital adventures? (It looks as if they'd never discussed it, which would be utterly unbelievable if it weren't so common.) But can the rest of us really still be surprised by these never-ending revelations?

Men are fascinated by sex with novel women. Is this still news? Does anyone still dispute this? Many, if not most men in positions of plentiful sexual opportunity will take advantage of that opportunity -- at least occasionally. Many  women will find this offensive, but what's really offensive is our collective inability (or unwillingness) to face reality.

By saying that, I don't mean to criticize women who are offended by this aspect of human male sexuality. No, I mean to call out men for being too cowardly to tell women the truth about themselves. If you marry someone under false pretences, you're a coward and a fool. If Tiger Woods promised his wife that he'd only have sex with her for the rest of his life, knowing what he did about his appetites and his many erotic opportunities, then he deserves all the condemnation he's getting -- and then some. The offense is not the sex; it's cowardice manifested as deceit.

Still, as any homosexual will tell you, it ain't easy coming out, even in 2009. Just look at a few recent examples of the blind sexual hysteria out there:

• Matthew Freeman was convicted of "criminal sexual conduct involving force or coercion" for having (consensual) sex with his 15 year-old girlfriend when he was 17. The age of consent in Michigan is 16, so this was considered a sex crime. Since his conviction, the ironically named Freeman has to tell his neighbors that he's a sex offender, and cannot be within 1000 feet of a school, even if he lives there.
• In September, a 13 year-old girl named Hope hanged herself. Why? She'd sent a photo of her boobs to a male friend. When word got out, Hope faced a Lord of the Flies situation at school, where she was harassed and insulted, called a "whore." The shame was too much for this fragile young girl to handle.
• Christopher Handley, a 39 year-old office worker from Iowa faces ten years in prison and $250,000 in fines for having received Japanese comic books depicting children in sexual situations. Not photos. Not videos. Just comics. Handley was a collector of "manga" a type of comic that is hugely popular in Japan. He collected the entire genre, according to his lawyer, not just the stuff depicting kinky kids. He's not accused of ever having assaulted a child or of owning "child pornography." He's not accused of having "done" anything at all, other than receiving a few magazines that depicted children in sexual situations. Presumably, the same fate awaits any museum director whose collection contains works of art in which minors are depicted sexually. (Heads-up, curators of Ancient Greek sculpture!)

• In New Hampshire, adultery is still a crime, punishable with a fine of $1,200.

Meanwhile, news of the decades-long cover up of an unimaginably heartless campaign of real sexual abuse of tens of thousands of children gets far less attention than it deserves. The Catholic church has now admitted that both in the United States and in Ireland, scores of serial pedophiles in priests' cloaks were consistently protected against charges of abuse and relocated to new areas where they were free to continue their twisted teachings. One Irish priest recently admitted to having abused a new boy every two weeks for decades. But the pope and other Catholic authorities still claim the moral authority to tell the rest of us how to handle sexuality. How is that possible? Why haven't the pope and all his cardinals resigned in shame and skulked off into the shadows of history, where they belong?

Where's shame when it's really warranted?