Adultery
 |
Man and woman undergoing public exposure for adultery in Japan, around 1860 |
Adultery is generally defined as consensual
sexual intercourse by a
married person with someone other than his or her lawful spouse. In many jurisdictions, an unmarried person who is sexually involved with a married person is also considered an adulterer. The common synonym for adultery is
infidelity as well as
unfaithfulness or in
colloquial speech,
cheating. It was also known in earlier times by the legalistic term "
alienation of affection".[
1]
The sexual partner of a person committing adultery is often referred to in legal documents (especially
divorce proceedings) as a
co-respondent, while the person whose spouse has been unfaithful is often labeled a
cuckold; originally, the latter term was applied only to males, but in more recent times women have been characterized in this way too.
A marriage in which both spouses agree that it is acceptable to have sexual relationships with other people is termed
open marriage and the resulting sexual relationships, though still adulterous, are not treated as such by the spouses.
There have been other varieties of adultery; in
Hawaii before the arrival of
Christians, twenty-three different kinds were recognized .
Historically adultery has been subject to severe
sanctions including the
death penalty and has been grounds for
divorce under fault-based divorce
laws. In some places the method for punishing adultery is
stoning to death.[
2]
In the original
Napoleonic Code, a man could ask to be divorced from his wife if she committed adultery, but the adultery of the husband was not a sufficient motive unless he had kept his
concubine in the family home.
In many
jurisdictions (e.g,
Austria,
Korea,
Taiwan), adultery is still
illegal. In the
United States, laws vary from state to state. For example, in
Pennsylvania, adultery is technically punishable by 2 years of imprisonment or 18 months of treatment for insanity (for history, see Hamowy). That being said, such statutes are typically considered
blue laws, and are rarely, if ever, enforced. In the
U.S. Military, adultery is a court-martialable offense only if it was "to the prejudice of good order and discipline" or "of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces" [
3]. This has been applied to cases where both partners were members of the military (and particularly where one is in command of the other), or one partner and the other's spouse. The enforceability of criminal sanctions for adultery is very questionable in light of
Supreme Court decisions since 1965 relating to privacy and sexual intimacy, and particularly in light of
Lawrence v. Texas, which apparently recognized a broad constitutional right of sexual intimacy for consenting adults.
In
Canadian law, adultery is defined under the
Divorce Act. Though the written definition sets it as extramarital relations with someone of the opposite sex, the
recent change in the definition of marriage gave grounds for a
British Columbia judge to strike that definition down. In a 2005 case of a woman filing for divorce, her husband had cheated on her with another man, which the judge felt was equal reasoning to dissolve the union.
Judaism
In
Old Testament Judaism, adultery was forbidden in the seventh commandment of the
Ten Commandments, but this did not apply to a married man having relations with an unmarried woman. Only a married woman engaging in sexual intercourse with another man counted as adultery, in which case both the woman and the man were considered guilty [
4].
In
halakha (Jewish Law) the penalty for adultery is stoning for both the man and the woman, but this is only enacted when there are two independent witnesses who warned the sinners prior to the crime being done. Hence this is rarely carried out, but a man is not allowed to continue living with a wife who cheated on him, and is obliged to give her a
get or bill of divorce written by a
Sofer or scribe.
Pakistan
In
Pakistan adultery is criminalized by a law called the
Hudood Ordinance, which specifies a maximum penalty of
death (although only
imprisonment and
corporal punishment have ever actually been used). It is particularly controversial because a woman making an accusation of
rape must provide extremely strong evidence to avoid being charged under it herself.
*
Adultery in literature*
Incest*
Flowers in the Attic*
Fornication*
Mistress*
Ten Commandments*
Zina*Best Practices: Progressive Family Laws in Muslim Countries (August 2005} [
5]
*Hamowy, Ronald.
Medicine and the Crimination of Sin: "Self-Abuse" in 19th Century America. pp2/3 [https://www.mises.org/journals/jls/1_3/1_3_8.pdf]
