Should adultery be illegal?

Post Reply New Topic

That is an awesome quote.

Forcing people to live together when they have little in common and intensely dislike each other is one of the more vicious demands of social normative demands and extraordinarily stupid

I am a Christian, I don't think what he is saying is BS. You need to establish a difference between sin and law. The fact that adultery is a sin does not mean that one can conclude that it therefor logically follows that it ought to be a crime.

The Christian ideal of monogamy is something foisted on humanity. The concept you can love only one person at a time. It may fit some people but it is not universal and there are cultures where it is customary and accepted that welcome guests are offered the host's wife as part of courtesy. People differ and civilization should mature and get used to the idea.

Certainly food for thought. I'm not of the opinion that one need only "love" one person. I have loved (in some way) a handful of women over the years, some I continue to think fondly of and one or two I still have strong feelings for--one in particular even my wife says she ought to slap me for letting her get away despite the obvious benefits to her.

For me, I've learned, at least from my own experience, that the only true love is the love between two friends. The love for my wife is no different than the same affection I feel for my male friends, my own children, or adults and children I work with. What makes it unique is we agree that we can be more than "just friends" and prefer to remain friends for life, honoring our commitment to each other and choosing not to share our unique commitment to each other with others. There is a mutual sense of camaraderie, of trust, and of protection that I don't feel would exist beyond our exclusive commitment. I'm not sure one can really have that with multiple partners--though the polys here would surely disagree. I simply cannot understand how I'd ever suppress any feelings of jealousy in that kind of relationship. I think of our relationship as a kind of mutual ownership of each other and a strong support system for our separate goals. How dare someone from the outside seek to interfere.

Actually...

I feel that men should be held to a greater level of accountability. Certainly, if a wife chose to cheat on her husband, she is not faultless. But I think it is absolutely abhorrent that there are men who would actively pursue women they know are married--and even worse if the relationship is momentarily on the rocks. Even our relationship isn't perfect, at least not all the time! But having a problem to work out relationally is not cause for breakup altogether. And it's not an invitation for an outsider to move in. I think there should be more "alienation of affection" laws with tougher penalties for those who are guilty of this. And I mean jail time, not just money won out of civil suits.

I don't mean to make women simply victims of the wiles of unruly men. Women pursue men, also, and they ought to be similarly penalized as I've described. I just think that the tendency to steal someone away from a spouse is more a part of men's psychology than women, and you also have the situation in which both a man and woman are married to other people, in which case the man is doubly responsible--to the man from whom he "stole" a spouse and to the woman he cheated on. In that case, it would be assumed that the man was the pursuer.

So, yeah, it looks like adultery IS illegal in certain jurisdictions.

Simple generalities about humanity reveals a profound ignorance of history, culture, psychology and the way people live together in a common culture react.. I remained married to one person for 49 years until she died. There were incidences of adultery and we found they were basically inconsequential to our relationship. I do not expect everybody will have the same type of relationship nor react in the same way. Laws are essentially proclamations that everybody must behave the same way. That's because government has not the resources, the wisdom or simply the basic knowledge to work out a sophisticated inter-relationship between widely differing individuals to their mutual satisfaction. Better to let them fight it out without interference unless it threatens to become lethal.

Under both Islamic and Jewish law if a person commits adultery then they should be stoned to death.

End of problem.

Or end of Islamic and Jewish law.

"There were incidences of adultery". Let me guess. She was screwing around on you and you forgave her.

I had a friend and his wife was going out on "dates" with her boss from work.

When I twigged to what was going on I said to my friend: "I am your friend so I will help you beat the crap out of this creep".

He said "No, my wife has her "needs" and who am I to stop her?'

Well, let me tell you this. NO ONE messes with me. I am a good loyal friend and a bad enemy to have.
If you mess with me then you will suffer. Period.

No way. It's an ethical crime, not a legal one.

Plus, how do you define it? Lots and lots of couples are quite happily adulterous - some even parade it in front of their partners (cuckoldry) or join in with their partner's adultery (swinging threesomes). Do these count?

As long as he can stray then that makes it an even deal, if they are both happy with things. Otherwise though it does sound like she's taking the piss.

You evidently have no conception of decent human relationships. If you think physical assault is the solution to how people should relate to each other you are a criminal and certainly should end up in jail. On that point of the law I thoroughly agree.

Why can't a person's "needs" be satisfied by that person's partner?

Well... OK... Before we were married, my wife and I were "on and off" for various reasons. And we used to talk often about what happened, so I know things about her sexual partners that I probably shouldn't. So, yeah, I can think of obvious reasons why someone would stray because of "needs."

But still, if you commit to a single person and that person commits to you, you have expectations of each other that are perfectly reasonable. Being "satisfied" is only one very small aspect of the whole package, and the promise of exclusivity takes precedence over any "needs" that might arise.

If both partners can stray, why bother getting together in the first place? Doesn't sound much like any real kind of meaningful commitment to me.

On the flip side, though, my wife and I both agree that we could forgive each other if something happened and that adultery wouldn't necessarily kill our relationship. Our solution has been to consider the root causes of straying and avoid them altogether. A lot of times sex is more like the end result. It's generally more a lack of emotional support or agreement that drives couples apart--among other reasons, of course. One person seeks those kinds of things in another partner and that seems to be where the intimacy develops. Cheating happens when the two start spending WAY too much time together.

I also think that patience goes a long way to waiting out the kinds of issues that lead to adultery, especially with a lack of intimacy. I've learned, for example, that my wife doesn't really want to have sex after she's had a baby. Things weren't SO bad after our first child. It was just when she had an emergency C-section with our second child a year and a half later that she REALLY suffered from a lack of desire. So, child-rearing and financial problems aside, my wife physically COULDN'T be there for me. And just when I thought our sex life was over, she just "woke up" one day and I'm finding I'M the one too tired to keep up with her.

I wouldn't have cheated on her, anyway, though. We both had our moments before we got married, and before we got married we agreed that part of our lives was over. I know her well enough that she wouldn't get in a situation in which she'd be tempted to cheat and wouldn't leave me even if she did. IF that were to happen, though, I wouldn't hesitate to use the legal process to make divorce as miserable as possible and to go after the guy trying to steal her from me. I might have mentioned she's a very good paralegal for a divorce lawyer (my wife generally only handles bankruptcies and dislikes handling divorces, but she knows her stuff either way). I expect she'd likewise make my life a living hell, too.

We have a different strategy for avoiding divorce. We've agreed that the first person to leave HAS to take the kids. That alone is an unpleasant enough consequence worth staying together for.

People change. I imagine you've lived long enough to realize that. I am not the same person I was at 12 or 20 or 40 or even 60. Hopefully adjustments can be made. Sometimes they cannot. That has to be solved between participants. Hopefully peacefully with good will.

HOPEFULLY, yes. I just don't find it unreasonable that certain things can be expected to stay the same. What's so wrong with making a promise and keeping it?

Well, not really. along with the person who said "the government has no place in our bedrooms"
NOT that you SHOULD do it, OBVIOUSLY!