Punish crimes, not people's flaws

David Soler

Adultery is going to be in the spotlight soon. Hushy rumors are spreading across the country that say in some time, several states are going to enable laws toughening and enforcing it's penalties on adultery.

This January, the Free Times reported possible harsh punishments for adultery to be enforced in Michigan. "Michigan's second-highest court says that anyone involved in an extramarital fling can be prosecuted for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in prison," it reported.

Nowadays, such "penalties" are just blue laws. Maryland, for example, penalizes you with a remarkable $10 fine. Ho, ho, ho. But, can you imagine someday receiving a 10-year jail sentence for an illicit hide-the-cigar game? Huy, huy, huy. In Europe, no way, but in Yankeeland is another story.

Lucky number seven of the Ten Commandments left adultery at the same level as murder and stealing. And if murder and theft are punished by the present secular law, then why hasn't this law taken the same enforcing approach for adultery as it did for the former crimes?

Why? Because being unfaithful might not really be a crime.

Something appears to be truly illegal when one of the parties involved has no choice in the activity. A theft robs you without your consent, a murder takes your life, a drug dealer gives you something you won't be able to say 'no' to and so on.

But with adultery, everything changes. With adultery, both parties involved are willing to do it. It's not something 'imposed' on one of them. By contrast, when sex is, you have a punishable crime. It's called rape.

Could it be because of this implicit reciprocal consent that the laws on adultery have not been enforced for so long?

But if the powers that be decide it is a punishable crime, they are going to work to enforce such laws. And if the army of lawmakers agrees to get too real and pass anti-adultery laws, the adultery field will generate enough hilarity to ignite 10 "Daily Show spinoffs. Think of it. First, our grandpa senators will need to define the scope of adultery. Everything punishable, or just intercourse? Two years for a "Monica get down" but five for "with the lights off"? And how will you prove one and or the other? Please, don't tell me people will need to stockpile dried body fluids on clothes!

Moreover, adultery, unlike other crimes, has an easy unilateral solution: divorce. One in two Americans is already getting divorced. If police start unleashing sting raids pursuing adulterous females and males alike a la drug dealers, that ratio is going to further increase. Does society really need to punish such a tractable human flaw?

People should be responsible first and act accordingly. In our democratic society, policymakers should focus on issues that can't partially be solved. Adultery is not one of them.

David Soler is a biomedical sciences graduate and a columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at dsoler@kent.edu.

Step Up, Crusaders, Outlaw Adultery

Susan Campbell

To people who worry that same-sex marriages threaten the institution, I have one powerful, life-changing word for you: adultery.

Pure and simple, what so often threatens traditional marriage - man-on-woman, woman-on-man - is not extending to same-sex couples the rights now enjoyed by opposite-sex ones. Instead, marriage is far more threatened by those of us on the inside, by adults who forget the seriousness of their vows and stray. If you really want to protect marriage, protect it from the heathens within.

Let's ban adultery.

For our purposes, adultery shall include voluntary sexual activity between at least one married person with someone to whom that person is not married. None of this "it depends on what the meaning of the word `is' is." Let our battle cry be: "It is what it is!"

Ooh! Wouldn't that look great on a T-shirt?

The idea comes from a helpful reader named Marie. I wish I could say I thought of it first.

How often adultery actually occurs is difficult to say. Some polls contend that as many as half of all adults - men and women - have bent or broken the forsake-all-others rule. Some polls place the number lower. Regardless, if adultery is a symptom of a marriage gone awry, we can simply ban it - just like in the good old days - and thereby bolster marriage in a meaningful way.

Connecticut enjoyed a legal ban on adultery as recently as 1991, when the law was repealed after a few cases reminded people that the Puritans had been here and left deep footprints. At its last wheeze, the crime was considered a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in prison.

Adultery has been grounds for punishment for, well, forever.

In this country, anti-adultery laws were carryovers from medieval England, where church-based courts (called "bawdy courts") served with the civil legal system to keep people on the straight and narrow. The word "bawdy" came from the topics most often explored in the church courts - adultery, failure to attend church, fornication and other fun weekend activities.

When the Puritans brought their religion to the New World, the rules imposed by the courts were sometimes incorporated into state constitutions. In early Connecticut, a handful of people were even executed for the crime of adultery. Now, of course, we can agree that's going too far.

Through the years, people stopped paying attention to the law. Its reintroduction might have enjoyed more support during the long and lusty reign of Bill Clinton. In a 1998 Courant/Connecticut poll conducted about the time Monica Lewinsky's name was being burned into our collective consciousness, 75 percent of people polled said adultery was "basically wrong." Twenty-three percent said they'd be willing to listen to the context of the act before making a judgment, and less than 1 percent said adultery was basically OK. (Can you imagine? Where do those people party?)

Of course, an anti-adultery law would not be without its problems. So far this session, more than 3,000 bills have been proposed beneath the gold dome of the State Capitol. Getting legislators - pro-family and anti- alike - to pay attention to such a controversial bill will be challenging. In fact, I have thus far contacted 11 legislators - Republican, Democratic, representatives and senators - and I've unearthed no one willing to stand up and denounce adultery.

Then, too, a state representative who in real life is a police sergeant said enforcing such a law (and acting as a private detective to prove that a crime was committed) might eat up the valuable time of already strapped law-enforcement officials.

Surely there's some political leader out there willing to really support marriage! Let's keep our vows! It is what it is!
Link to Hartford Courant
E-mail: campbell@courant.com