Posted on 12/29/2014 8:22:43 AM PST by C19fan
Oh, I see now. You have no argument, so you just call people names. OK then.
“Oh, I see now. You have no argument, so you just call people names. OK then.”
I made an argument. You don’t see it the same way I do. Oh well.
I’m late to the discussion, but I don’t think adultery should be illegal. On the other hand, I disagree with those who claim we cannot legislate morality. All just law is based on morality.
If we applied libertarian ideology to traffic law, we’d have to eliminate speed limits. It would be up to each person to travel at the speed they felt was safe. Yet, I think speed limits help us all travel safer even though the limits are clearly much, much lower than some drivers could safely drive.
What’s this have to do with adultery? I think a state has the right to pass laws in accordance with the US Constitution. There is no constitutional right to adultery, sodomy, or any other sex act deemed deviant by a majority of voters in a given state. Therefore, they could morally and legally ban certain sex acts. The SCOTUS disagrees of course, but they can’t point to any specific constitutional provision that gives them authority in this regard.
I also think the state has a vital interest in keeping families together, and adultery does grave injury to the social order. As a minimum, adulterers deserve scorn. Like I wrote, I wouldn’t personally vote to make it illegal, but I’d support a punishing adulterers in divorce proceedings if someone could propose an orderly way of doing that.
Most of what I have been referring to is when adults engage in consensual sex without cheating or harming anyone. Responsibility2nd appears to be advocating for prosecution of people engaging in truly harmless activities. That is what I have been arguing against!
Look at my previous post, I’m not condoning the act of cheating, I’m saying that pre-marital sex, non-vaginal, and other things that have historically fallen under the banner of “adultery” are not crimes because there is no victim. If a spouse cheats, then divorce court is the legal remedy.
I’m not suggesting that anyone is condoning adultery here.
What I’m arguing, however, is that adultery is not a victimless crime because the cheating spouse hides his or her extramarital activities and then places the faithful spouse at risk of contracting disease. Therefore, adultery is a type of reckless endangerment.
I have a theory for why some of you believe adultery is victimless: You probably think of adultery as one affair between two people. To the contrary, cheating spouses (especially now in the internet age) can hook up with multiple people, many of them strangers. They risk picking up disease and carrying it home to their unsuspecting faithful spouses.
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