When the initial rumors of sexual assault by basketball superstar Kobe Bryant were reported, I hoped that they would turn out to be untrue. Yet, I knew instinctively that there must be something to the story or it simply would not have had any teeth.

Days later, when Bryant was finally charged with sexually assaulting a female employee at a Cordillera, Colorado, resort the Los Angeles Lakers guard admitted that he had sex with his accuser, a 19-year old woman, but proclaimed he was innocent of coercion, claiming the sex was consensual.

"I [am] furious at myself, disgusted at myself for making a mistake of adultery," he told reporters during a press conference shortly after the charges were announced.

Here's something else I know instinctively: assuming this case goes to trial, it will become a media circus much as the trial of O.J. Simpson. And unfortunately, a largely secular media will focus on the question of Mr. Bryant's innocence or guilt from a legal perspective and will miss the larger and more important matter that he broke God's Law.

We tend to dismiss adultery as an acceptable part of American pop culture.

Like the terrorism that has marred the Middle East for decades but only became "real" to us when it surfaced here in America on 9/11, we have fallen into the trap of believing that marital infidelity is no big deal unless it involves our spouse or that of a close friend or another family member.

We expect the rich and the famous to be serial adulterers and regard as rare those who love and remain faithful to the wife of their youth.

Bill Clinton didn't help our perception in this regard. His eight years of presidential "bimbo eruptions," culminating in an affair with a 19-year old White House intern named Monica that Clinton himself tried to explain away as not "sexual relations with that woman," reinforced our willingness to wink at this sin. Clinton defenders argued night after night on cable TV talk shows that as long as it was a matter of a public figure's private life, a person's behavior really didn't matter-as if somehow character has a split personality.

To Mr. Bryant's credit, at least he admitted his guilt in this regard.

Long ago God weighed in on the matter. You might say He etched His opinion in stone when he wrote: "Thou shall not commit adultery."

Some like Joseph heeded the command. He refused the sexual advances of Potiphar's wife and was ultimately blessed by God even though he was falsely accused of rape and sent to jail.

Yet, some of the greatest Bible characters were done in by their sexual lust. Solomon in all his wisdom wasn't satisfied with one woman. He had hundreds of wives and concubines. And his father, David-described as "a man after God's heart"-not only committed adultery but murder in an attempt to cover his tracks.

Let none boast here, especially in light of Jesus' warning in the New Testament that simply lusting after another woman was the same as adultery itself.

We should find it in our hearts to understand and forgive Mr. Bryant for his transgression.

"Real Answers™" furnished courtesy of The Amy Foundation Internet Syndicate. To contact the author or The Amy Foundation, write or E-mail to: P. O. Box 16091, Lansing, MI 48901-6091; amyfoundtn@aol.com. Visit our website at www.amyfound.org.