Should adultery be illegal?

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Because the person who made the promise is very frequently not anymore the person required to keep it.
Are you exactly the same person with the same likes and dislikes and understandings as you were twenty years ago?

Works for swans, they tell me.

It is against the law in lots of places already and has been for ages. That's why it is often legal grounds for divorce. You might find this article interesting.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-04-26-column26_ST_N.htm

I'm guessing you're FOR the legalization of ploygamy? (maybe I should start another poll soon:P)

I'm aware that not all sin according to God should become a crime in earthly jurisdictions. I feel that I have already been really lenient. Like I can't find a reason why consenting casual sex should be illegal as long as the people are not married. I also can't find a reason why non-Christian religions should be denied their right to practise their religion. However, to me, adultery is like other things such as "You shall not murder" and "you shall not steal." The vast majority of governments in the world has laws against murder and stealing. I believe that adultery should have a law because it goes against the human values of honesty and trust and integrity. And these values are shared regardless of your beliefs. I don't know, I guess its sometimes hard to decided which sins should have a legal aspect to it. you don't want to shove your beliefs down people's throat but you have this whole understanding of why things are sins since sins are not good for society.

In other words, for example, everyone who tells a lie should be imprisoned. The prison industry would be delighted and the advertising industry would be destroyed, not to speak of the devastation on current politics.

[quote="Sand"

In other words, for example, everyone who tells a lie should be imprisoned. The prison industry would be delighted and the advertising industry would be destroyed, not to speak of the devastation on current politics.[/quote]

Hell. The Jailers would be in the jug, right along with the prisoners.

ruveyn

Forget about Adultery. Forget about marriage.

Now we have "The Pill" and "The day after pill" and abortions.

So let any woman screw any guy she wants to.

If she CHOOSES to have a baby then let her raise it on her own without demanding that the "one night stand" father pay half his income for the next 20 years.

But the punishment ought to fit the severity of the crime. Telling a lie, for instance, is a terrible crime no matter how you look at it. There IS such a thing as truth in advertising, and there is nothing wrong in appealing to taste to attract a target consumer group when selling some combination of herbs, caffeine, and sugar water. I'm not a smoker and I strongly dislike tobacco smoke. But as long as tobacco companies are allowed to sell cigarettes, I see absolutely nothing wrong at all with Joe Camel. The problem with youth smoking is not the image that sells the product, but rather the ways in which ciggies get into their hands in the first place. But if they are knowingly selling an addictive product and misrepresenting the adverse health affects of it, THAT is a serious lie and they should care for the poor saps they hooked into buying their products to include hospitalization and paying death benefits to their families. Since they are required to print warning labels, however, it becomes the individual's choice and partially lets them off the hook. For telling lies in court there ARE penalties to include fines and jail time. So don't say that telling lies is legal--there are many cases in which deception is a prosecutable crime.

Current politics? Politicians on both sides of the continuum are brought up on ethics violations all the time, more often Republicans than Democrats, which just goes to show that Republicans do a better job of policing their own. Yet there are no shortages of broken promises from election to election. While politicians aren't often jailed for their failures, the tiniest infraction these days is career suicide.

Telling a non-truth is not a crime, as such. People who write fiction, do it for a living. It is deceiving someone that is the wrong being done.

ruveyn

If it hurts other people enough, then the law intervenes. If you lie to a friend about the mark you got on a certain test, then you're only fooling yourself. But if you lie about things having to do with finances and money, its usually illegal. Why then is adultery legal? You're hurting your significant other. They may not know about it at the moment, but if all truth is revealed, ya.

People who write fiction do not fit the definition of "lying". And exactly, you're deceiving your spouse.

How so? My spouse and I are truthful with each other.

ruveyn

Right. But with reading a novel, for instance, the reader is fully aware that what he or she reads is a product of the author's imagination that may or may not relate to the "real world" in varying degrees. I would rather define a "lie" as something said or written to either cause harm to come to others or to avoid taking responsibility for some misdeed, however minor. Even if a "little white lie" is told to avoid personal harm EVEN THOUGH it comes through no fault of the would-be victim, it's still wrong but is seen as the "lesser of two evils." It's possible that one can be called on any kind of lie or deceit in such a way to bring unwarranted consequences, but rarely does this ever make it to a legal dispute.

Oh, and libel/slander are also prosecutable actions. Even if someone is telling the truth, they can be fought through the legal system if they are unable to show proof.

In my view, adultery is a crime against the person to whom a husband or wife belongs, a crime-against-the-state in miniature, and I do look at the family as also being a political unit. Husbands and wives have a duty to "protect the borders" and either avoid threats or directly confront them. Adultery represents a breach or intrusion into an alliance and both parties should have the right to respond appropriately through all available means, with diplomacy and reconciliation to be preferred. War begins when diplomacy fails, and I have no problem at all with making my partner's life temporarily miserable if it means a future chance at reviving lost love. And if I can't win that battle, I don't mind opening another front and taking all I can in a civil suit.

My whole point is that, to me, marriage is MUCH more than some silly vow made on one day that can just as easily be broken the next. I also believe that love/affection/intimacy represent a tiny portion of the many facets of a committed relationship. If it is worthy at all of protection, it is worth fighting and even dying for. I'll even go so far as to say my wife is more important to me than our children. That doesn't make them UNimportant--I'm just saying that my wife will always be at the top. I think our sense of unity (MOST of the time) has influenced our kids, even as young as they are, and we all physically stay very close together every chance we get. To me, breaking up a family sends the message that promises don't matter and the family unit is irrelevant. As a political and legal entity, married partners are duty-bound to protect it, avoid threats, and respond quickly and severely to attacks against it.

I do NOT think, however, that what happens between singles who aren't and have never been married should carry the same penalty. That IS a form of adultery, but not one that carries the same weight as between two people who are committed to each other. I think that IF people are thoughtless enough to engage in that behavior they at least ought to exercise common sense and avoid further physical consequences--if not, they should be REQUIRED to get married in the event of an unwanted pregnancy and forfeit any right to a divorce in the future. Violent rape under certain circumstances should be a capital offense.

Only if the defamation laws are absolute s**t and work on a guilty until proven innocent basis. Good laws would require whoever's making the accusation to prove guilt.

Anyways, to answer the OP, no, adultery shouldn't be illegal.

I don't think I understand what you mean by your first sentence. "Innocent until proven guilty" is the cornerstone of the American legal system, but it all comes down to the burden of proof.

The trouble, though, is too often that certain mechanisms of justice inherently do NOT assume innocence. I speak from experience here. If DHS gets an anonymous tip, regardless of the plausibility of it, they WILL investigate. After my daughter, my second child, was born, a prankster or malicious caller (we tend to think the latter) reported us. This happened THREE DIFFERENT TIMES, all within weeks of each other, and each time the social workers had no choice but to conclude that the calls were bogus--which isn't really all that typical for CPS, so I guess we just got lucky in that it was more obvious that we take good care of our kids than it might be for other parents.

Is it a sh!++Y way to administer "justice"? According to the American legal system and the Constitution, you betcha. But it is what it is and it's not likely to go anywhere.

Meanwhile, for those of us who do want to live peacefully with our neighbors and friends, we have no recourse--legal or otherwise. It was becoming obvious within our church that we were being singled out and mistreated, and before things blew up to nuclear proportions, we were told not to discuss it with anyone and keep quiet about it. We knew good and well who was messing with us. Trouble is we didn't have that funny little thing called "proof," and things WOULD have gotten worse if we had. But knowing whodunnit and giving out just enough info to get people talking was just enough to send the message we wanted to send, and after that meeting a lot of things changed.

So even though we know who the troublemaker was, we'd have been made out to look like gossips and slanderers if we'd talked. And that's the awful truth because of those few times when, rather than confronting the issue head-on and fixing it, we'd rather blame the victim.

And I think there's a special place in Gehenna reserved for people like that. And homewreckers, too.

Last edited by AngelRho on 29 Nov 2010, 6:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.