In most states, including New York, cheating on your spouse is considered only a misdemeanour. But in Idaho, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, among others, it is a felony crime punishable by prison. The laws remain on the books largely due to inertia, says The New York Times. Getting rid of them would require politicians to vocally oppose them - something few are willing to do.
That certainly was not the case in South Korea, whose adultery laws still very much had teeth in the 21st century. Between and , when adultery was finally decriminalised, more than 5, people were successfully prosecuted for cheating on their partner, CNN reports.
Countries governed by Islamic law, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Somalia, all strictly prohibit zina, or "fornication outside marriage". Prosecutions are common and punishment can include fines, arbitrary detention, imprisonment, flogging and in extreme cases, the death penalty.
Women are overwhelmingly targeted. Human rights organisations argue that in several Muslim nations, adultery laws are often used against women who have been raped. Additionally, if a man cheats in his wife, the woman he cheated on her with is sentenced to exile for four years and one day.
If a man has sex with a married women, his punishment is six years of jail time. The Indonesian government law doesn't have cheating-related laws, but much of the country is Muslim and abides by the Sharia.
In the independent Indonesian province of Aceh, for example, the government created a law that " prohibits being alone with someone of the opposite sex to whom you are not married or related and adultery," according to the Sexual Rights Database.
Taiwan and the Philippines are the only remaining Asian countries that treat infidelity as a crime, according to Taiwan News. The four-month-per-act rule applies to the "other" man or woman who was the third party in the affair, while the husband or wife who cheats, could be sentenced to a year in prison.
Taiwan's Minister of Culture Lung Ying-tai said she wants to do away with the law, but a survey conducted by the department found that The rule was created during the 17th century as part of English common law, when women were considered men's property.
Under an alienation of affections law, the prosecutor doesn't have to prove their partner had sex with another person, just that they were engaged in an extramarital relationship that caused them to receive less love and attention than if the affair didn't occur. In , South Dakota made the law gender neutral , so women could sue the "other" woman. Prior to that, men were only allowed to sue men who had partaken in affairs with their wives.
Most cases are difficult to prove and don't result in actual prosecution of the cheater. Malott wrote in a Albuquerque Business Journal article about the shortcomings of the law. Read more: 10 women explain why they forgave their partners for cheating. In these cases, like in other states, money is awarded if the third party is found to be guilty. The jury decides an appropriate amount of money the plaintiff should receive for damages, like lost affection or companionship.
The law is rarely invoked, however. Illinois used to follow alienation of affections laws as well, allowing for damages against an accused homewrecker.
This was part of the state's "heart balm" laws designed to provide legal action in cases of martial strife, for example, breaking off a marriage contract. But all of the heart balm laws, including those on adultery, were repealed in Anyone found guilty of stepping out in the Sooner State is subject to felony charges.
Oklahoma law also forbids cohabiting with someone else within 30 days of a divorce or remarrying within six months of a divorce. Like many other states on this list, North Carolina has a law that allows you to sue an unfaithful partner and their lover through alienation of affections laws. It's estimated that about alienation of affection cases are filed in North Carolina every year, according to a local law firm. Read more: The phrase 'once a cheater, always a cheater' isn't always true, but serial cheaters do exist.
Here's why they do it. A kingdom of about , people on the island of Borneo, Brunei made headlines earlier this year by implementing a new law to make adultery punishable by death. Based in Islamic law, the new addition to the penal code calls for offenders to be stoned to death in front of witnesses. After international outrage about the policy, which also imposed capital punishment for gay sex, Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah said the law would not be enforced, NPR reported , following a tradition of allowing for capital punishment but never executing anyone in the tiny Southeast Asian nation.
For adulterers, the penalty is death by stoning, according to a study on the country's laws. However, this doesn't appear to be enforced often. The last recorded executions in Nigeria were of three people convicted of armed robbery in According to the New York Times , there have been two cases of people both women convicted for adultery and sentenced to death by stoning, but both were overturned on appeal.
Petraeus resigned as CIA director because of adultery, he was widely understood to be acknowledging a misdeed but not a crime. Yet in his state of residence, Virginia, as in 22 others including Massachusetts, adultery remains a criminal act, a vestige of the way US law has anchored legitimate sexual activity within marriage.
In most of those states, including New York, adultery is a misdemeanor. But in others — Massachusetts, Idaho, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin — it is a felony, though rarely prosecuted. In the armed forces, it can be punished severely, although usually in combination with greater wrongdoing.
In nearly all the rest of the industrialized world, adultery is not covered by criminal code. Like other US state laws related to sex — sodomy, fornication, rape — adultery laws date to the Old Testament, onetime capital offenses stemming at least partly from a concern about male property.
Peter Nicolas of the University of Washington Law School said the term stemmed from the notion of ''adulterating'' or polluting the bloodline of a family when a married woman had sex with someone other than her husband and ran the risk of having another man's child.
0コメント