(This weblog creates, for us all, a chance to meet at the interaction of Life and the New Spirituality. It is written by the author of Conversations with God, the worldwide best-selling series of books. The “New Spirituality” is defined by the author as “a new way to experience and express our natural impulse toward the Divine without making others wrong for the way in which they are doing it.”)

HIGHLIGHTS OF TODAY’S BLOG…
* Into men’s room stalls we will go in search of our morality
* The case against Larry Craig
* What is God’s Will with regard to all of this?
* Using ‘temptation’ as a tool of The Law

It has been a while now since the case of Idaho Sen. Larry Craig first broke and made all the headlines, and now that the dust has settled I should like to offer a few observations about all of this from the standpoint of the New Spirituality.
The issue in the case of Senator Larry Craig is far greater than whether Mr. Craig did what he is accused of doing or not. The central question is, even if he did do what he was accused of doing by the undercover officer who was in the stall next to him in the men’s room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport on that day in June… so what?
Let’s explore this issue for just a bit. Let’s say, for the sake of this discussion, that Mr. Craig did exactly what the officer said he did. Let us say that Mr. Craig openly invited and solicited a gay sexual encounter.
The “crime” here is, presumably, that this happened in a public place. I believe that public lewdness, or something akin to that, was the original charge. If I am close to understanding what occurred here, I believe an offer was made to reduce this charge to a misdemeanor if Mr. Craig pled guilty. He did so, he says, in a moment of panic, hoping to make the whole ugly matter — which he says was a misunderstanding — go away.
In the public’s mind as I read it, the problem however is not that Mr. Craig allegedly solicited a sexual encounter in a public place — but that, allegedly, he solicited it at all. In other words…

…the public doesn’t care whether this happened in a restroom in an airport or in the relative privacy of a hotel room in the same city. The fact that it happened (allegedly) is what had people outraged. Leaders of the Republican Party in Washington immediately called for Mr. Craig’s resignation from the Senate.
On September 1st he tendered that resignation, announcing his intention to leave the Congress after more than a quarter century of service. Should he have been pressured to do so? Senator Craig has publicly denied any wrongdoing and said that he is seeking legal advice as to whether he can withdraw his guilty plea and fight the charges that were made against him. Should the leadership within the GOP have given him a chance to do so?
Perhaps a far more interesting question to ask might be, “What does God have to say about all of us? Is God angry with Mr. Craig? Will God’s judgment fall down upon him? Is Mr. Craig’s immortal soul in danger of being condemned to the fires of Hades forever and ever and even forevermore?”
And, to get back to earthly matters, do you believe that our civil authorities are going a bit too far in seeking arrests and convictions through ‘entrapment’ — or what many might call entrapment?

The New Spirituality says that there is no such thing as right and wrong. There is only what works and what does not work in any moment, circumstance, or situation, and given what it is that you are trying to do. So what is it that we are trying to do in our society in the year 2007 with regard to the removal from public view of our sexual complexities (to say nothing of the activities that surround them)?
Do we really want to set up what amounts to the Morals Police? Do we really want to have our “undercover officers” sitting in stalls of men’s rooms across America and “acting as if” they were ready and willing to engage in a sexual experience — just to see who we can trap into responding to such a blatant invitation? Is this the proper role of the guardians of society? Is this the proper function of government?
Yet if government is not the proper vehicle through which societies ills are cleaned up, what is? Might it be a new cultural story altogether? A story that tells us that our sexuality need not be shameful — even our sexual attraction to people of the same gender — and therefore need not be hidden in dark places and sought out in furtive exchanges in our public restrooms?
Do you suppose it could ever come to pass that humanity would allow itself to express its authentic truth in all matters — sexual and otherwise — so long as no other individual was in any way truly damaged or harmed?
How sad is it, do you think, that some human beings need to seek out their sexual satisfactions in such humiliating and degrading circumstances? Why can we not allow ourselves to call all things human acceptable, is so long as no other human is injured? What possible difference can it make how people satisfy their need for love and their sexual urges, except to the people who are themselves involved? And where DOES God stand on all of us?
I invite your comments.
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