Finally tonight: marriage and why it's a shame the sin of adultery isn't considered more of a crime.

Adultery does to marriage what head-on collisions do to automobiles. The damage is always heavy, the repairs are certain to be drastic and costly, and the restored versions, if they can be repaired, will never really be quite as sound as the original.

Yet while we do everything in our power to avoid crashing our cars, we have always been far more reckless with our relationships. Our society seems to cry more over a crushed car than a mangled marriage.

If his game is right, an athlete can't go wrong admitting to adultery. If the economy is strong, a president can't be weakened by attempting to cover it up.

Can it be that we now give adultery a pass because marriage no longer matters to us? Perhaps the attacks on the family structure have finally induced an insensitivity to infidelity.

If, as a society, we took the sin of adultery more seriously, perhaps we might not consider its only crime to be getting caught.