Adultery
Suddenly, adultery is big
news. But what exactly is adultery? Is it illegal?
In case you have lost track
of all the adultery stories in the news, here is the list:
Former football star
Frank Gifford was photographed cuddling with a woman who was not his
wife (talk-show host Kathy Lee Gifford). He later admitted to having an affair
with the woman. Special angle: A tabloid paid her to seduce him.
Michael Kennedy , son
of Robert, admitted to having an affair with his daughter's 14-year-old baby
sitter.
Georgia gubernatorial
candidate Mike Bowers admitted to a 10-year extramarital affair. Special
angle: When Bowers was attorney general, he prosecuted a gay man in what became
a famous Supreme Court case ( Bowers vs. Hardwick ) upholding anti-sodomy
laws.
Police found comedian
Eddie Murphy , a married man, with a transvestite prostitute in his
car.
The newly appointed
president of ABC News, David Westin , acknowledged his affair with ABC
public-relations executive Sherrie Rollins , wife of political consultant
Ed Rollins.
A child-support suit was
filed against Roger Clinton , the president's brother, because he
conceived a child with a married woman in 1990.
The Air Force discharged
pilot Kelly Flinn because she disobeyed orders to end her relationship
with a married soccer coach.
Sgt. Maj. Gene
McKinney , the Army's top enlisted soldier, was charged with adultery, as
well as with sexually harassing four servicewomen.
Air Force Gen. Joseph
Ralston 's candidacy for the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was
derailed because he had had a relationship with another woman while separated
from his wife.
Army Maj.
Gen. John Longhouser , head of the Aberdeen Proving Ground, retired after
an affair he had had five years ago became public knowledge.
Most societies prohibit adultery--sex between a married
person and someone other than his or her spouse--at least, formally. A
handful--the most researched is a tribe of Alaskan Inuit--have condoned
affairs. Tolerance of the practice varies. In France, Prime Minister
François Mitterrand's mistress stood next to his wife at his funeral. In some
Muslim societies, adulterers are still stoned to death. The United States falls
somewhere between these extremes.
Three theories explain
the prohibition's genesis. One is evolutionary: Men must determine which
children they sire, something only strict monogamy can ensure. Another is
economic: Prohibiting adultery preserves monogamous relationships and thence
families, whose labor was needed for agriculture. Finally, it is said that Jews
enshrined the adultery prohibition in the Ten Commandments--of which it is the
seventh--to make their group more cohesive and to distinguish themselves from
surrounding polygamous tribes.
The United
States inherited English common law, which made adultery, as well as
fornication (sex between unmarried people) and sodomy (oral and anal sex),
punishable crimes. In the mid and late 19 th centuries, when states
wrote their criminal codes, they incorporated these sex laws. Twenty-six states
continue to have anti-adultery laws
on
the
books .
These laws vary considerably. Some define adultery as any intercourse outside
marriage. According to others, it occurs when a married person lives with
someone other than his or her spouse. In West Virginia and North Carolina,
simply "to lewdly and lasciviously associate" with anyone other than one's
spouse is to be adulterous.
Is a single
person in an
adulterous relationship guilty of adultery? All but seven states punish both
people involved. Colorado, Georgia, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Utah only
punish the married person. In the District of Columbia and in Michigan, when a
married man sleeps with an unmarried woman, only the man is guilty, but when a
married woman sleeps with an unmarried man, they're both guilty. Most laws make
no exceptions for couples who are separated or in the process of obtaining a
divorce. Punishments also vary. Adultery is a felony in Massachusetts,
Michigan, Oklahoma, and Idaho, and a misdemeanor everywhere else.
In
practice, adultery laws matter
little : Only one case--against an
Alabama man--has been prosecuted in the last five years. Most states have not
enforced their adultery laws since World War II.
Before the 1970s, when every state passed a "no fault
divorce " law, adultery was usually the only reason courts would grant
divorces. (Under no-fault divorce, no specific reason is required.) Charges of
adultery also can be used to get a more favorable divorce settlement.
Adultery
also matters in the military . The Uniform Code of Military Justice, the
military criminal code, bars married servicemen from having extramarital sex
and unmarried servicemen from sleeping with married people. However, the rules
come with qualifications. They say that the military will only prosecute when a
case harms "good order and discipline" and when the adultery is "of a nature to
bring discredit upon the armed forces." The ambiguity is intentional: Visits to
prostitutes are not reasons for a court-martial, but long-term affairs and
affairs between soldiers are considered dangerous and deserving of
punishment.
Unlike civilian anti-adultery laws, the
military rules are sometimes enforced. Last year the Air Force alone prosecuted
67 soldiers for adultery. Critics say that the military applies these laws
hypocritically, allowing high-ranking male officers to get away with affairs
but not women or rank-and-file soldiers. Secretary of Defense William Cohen has
ordered a Pentagon commission to clarify the guidelines in an effort to
eliminate perceived
inconsistencies .
Adultery
still plays a role in Catholic
annulments . The Catholic Church
still does not consider divorces legitimate: Marriage, it says, is a sacrament
and insoluble. A church considers a divorced person who remarries to be living
in a state of sin--i.e., committing adultery--unless a church tribunal annuls
the previous marriage(s). An annulment is a declaration that a marriage was not
legitimate to begin with. Adultery is grounds for annulment, on the theory that
if a person knew that his or her spouse had a predilection toward infidelity,
the marriage would not have occurred in the first place. Until recently the
church was stingy with annulments. But last year it granted more than 60,000,
nine out of 10 of them in the United States. Sheila Rauch Kennedy, ex-wife of
Rep. Joseph Kennedy II, has garnered much attention for her recent book,
Shattered Faith , which criticizes the church's annulment policies. She
claims that the church hurts children of annulled marriages when it claims that
their parents were never legitimately wed.
How widespread is adultery? Alfred Kinsey's famous
1948 survey of American sexual behavior found that seven out of 10 men had
cheated on their wives. More accurate, more recent research shows that the
prevalence of adultery is not as high. A survey taken two years ago by the
University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center shows that slightly
more than 11 percent of women and 21 percent of men admitted to having an
adulterous affair during their lives.
