Adultery

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Adultery is generally defined as consensual sexual intercourse of fornication 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.

Fornication is a term which refers to any sexual activity between unmarried partners. Sex between unmarried persons is distinguished from adultery by use of the term 'simple fornication'; whereas relations in which at least one of the parties is married, is considered 'adultery'.

Views on the gravity of adultery vary across nations and religions and have evolved considerably over history.

Definitions

Although the definition of "adultery" differs in nearly every legal system, the common theme is sexual relations outside of marriage, in one form or another.

For example, New York defines an adulterer as a person who "engages in sexual intercourse with another person at a time when he has a living spouse, or the other person has a living spouse." While in North Carolina adultery is when any man and woman "lewdly and lasciviously associate, bed and cohabit together." Minnesota defines adultery as: "when a married woman has sexual intercourse with a man other than her husband, whether married or not, both are guilty of adultery".

Adultery was known in earlier times by the legalistic term "criminal conversation" (another term, alienation of affection, is used when one spouse deserts the other for a third person). The term originates not from adult, which is from Latin a-dolescere, to grow up, mature, a combination of a, "to", dolere, "work", and the processing combound sc), but from the Latin ad-ulterare (to commit adultery, adulterate/falsify, a combination of ad, "at", and ulter, "above", "beyond", "opposite", meaning "on the other side of the bond of marriage").

A marriage in which both spouses agree that it is acceptable for the husband or wife to have sexual relationships with other people other than their spouse is a form of nonmonogamy. The resulting sexual relationships the husband or wife has with other people, although could be considered to be adultery in some legal jurisdictions, are not treated as such by the spouses.

Laws and Penalties

Man and woman undergoing public exposure for adultery in Japan, around 1860

In History

Among 'savages' generally adultery is rigorously condemned and punished. But it is condemned and punished only as a violation of the husband's rights. Among such peoples the wife is commonly reckoned as the property of her spouse, and adultery, therefore, is identified with theft. But it is theft of an aggravated kind, as the property which it would spoliate is more highly appraised than other chattels. So it is that in some parts of Africa the seducer is punished with the loss of one or both hands, as one who has perpetrated a robbery upon the husband <<(Reade, Savage Africa, p. 61).>> But it is not the seducer alone that suffers. Dire penalties are visited upon the offending wife by her wronged spouse in many instances she is made to endure such a bodily mutilation as will, in the mind of the aggrieved husband, prevent her being thereafter a temptation to other men <<(Schoolcraft, Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, I, 236; V, 683, 684, 686; also H.H. Bancroft, The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America, I, 514).>> If, however, the wronged husband could visit swift and terrible retribution upon the adulterous wife, the latter was allowed no cause against the unfaithful husband; and this discrimination found in the practices of savage peoples is moreover set forth in nearly all ancient codes of law. The Laws of Manu are Striking on this point. In ancient India, "though destitute of virtue or seeking pleasure elsewhere, or devoid of good qualities, yet a husband must be constantly worshipped as a god by a faithful wife"; on the other, hand, "if a wife, proud of the greatness of her relatives or [her own] excellence, violates the duty which she owes to her lord, the king shall cause her to be devoured by dogs in a place frequented by many" <<(Laws of Manu, V, 154; VIII, 371).>>

The influential Code of Hammurabi contains a section on adultery. It mirrors the customs of earlier societies in bringing harsh penalties upon those found guilty of adultery. The punishment prescribed in Hammurabi's Code was death by drowning or burning for both the unfaithful spouse and the external seducer. The pair could be spared if the wronged spouse pardoned the adulterer, but even still the king had to intervene to spare the lovers' lives.

In the Graeco-Roman world we find stringent laws against adultery, yet almost throughout they discriminate against the wife. The ancient idea that the wife was the property of the husband is still operative. The lending of wives practiced among some savages was, as Plutarch tells us, encouraged also by Lycurgus, though, be it observed, from a motive other than that which actuated the savages <<(Plutarch, Lycurgus, XXIX)>>. The recognized license of the Greek husband may be seen in the following passage of the Oration against Neaera, the author of which is uncertain, though it has been attributed to Demosthenes: "We keep mistresses for our pleasures, concubines for constant attendance, and wives to bear us legitimate children, and to be our faithful housekeepers. Yet, because of the wrong done to the husband only, the Athenian lawgiver Solon, allowed any man to kill an, adulterer whom he had taken in the act" (Plutarch, Solon).

In the early Roman Law the jus tori belonged to the husband. There was, therefore, no such thing as the crime of adultery on the part of a husband towards his wife. Moreover, this crime was not committed unless one of the parties was a married woman (Dig., XLVIII, ad leg. Jul.). That the Roman husband often took advantage of his legal immunity is well known. Thus we are told by the historian Spartianus that Verus, the imperial colleague of Marcus Aurelius, did not hesitate to declare to his reproaching wife: "Uxor enim dignitatis nomen est, non voluptatis." <<(Verus, V)>>.

Later on in Roman history, as the late William E.H. Lecky has shown the idea that the husband owed a fidelity like that demanded of the wife must have gained ground at least in theory. This Lecky gathers from the legal maxim of Ulpian: "It seems most unfair for a man to require from a wife the chastity he does not himself practice" <<(Codex Justin., Digest, XLVIII, 5-13; Lecky, History of European Morals, II, 313).>>

Adultery

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.

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 some jurisdictions, including Korea and 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" . This has been applied to cases where both partners were members of the military, 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.

Fornication

The laws on fornication have historically been tied with religion, however in many countries there have been attempts to secularize constitutions, and laws differ greatly from country to country. Rather than varying greatly along national lines, views on fornication are often determined by religion, which can cross borders.

Laws dealing with fornication are usually defined as intercourse between two unmarried persons of the opposite sex. These have been mostly repealed, not enforced, or struck down in various courts in the western world.

Fornication is a crime in many Muslim countries, and is often harshly punished. However, there are some exceptions. In Pakistan, for example, occasionally a charge is filed in order to prevent the accused from leaving the jurisdiction (for instance it is often used against drug smugglers, against whom it may not be possible to show a prima facie case for trial, but a charge of fornication, which requires a lower threshold, can be filed in the interim as the investigation unfolds.) In certain countries where parts of Islamic law are enforced, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, fornication of unmarried persons is punishable by lashings. This is in contrast to adultery, whereas if one of the convicted were married, their punishment would be death by stoning. Historically speaking, corporal punishment for sexual crimes are part of law enforcement in the Abrahamic faiths when comprehensively carried out.

Religious Views

Among the major world religions, adultery and fornication are considered major sins:

No other sin has such a baneful effect on the spiritual life. Because it is committed in secret, by mutual consent, and often without fear of the law, adultery is especially a sin against God and against the goal of life. Modern secular societies can do little to inhibit adultery and sexual promiscuity. Only the norms of morality which are founded on religion can effectively curb this sin.

Judaism

In 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 [1]. In the Bible, fornication is defined as idolatry or adultery, that is, the breaking of the covenant vow with God or the breaking of the holy wedding vows. To worship another god (idol) is to cheat on God, and is against the First Commandment. In the Bible, God says that those Israelites who worship idols have fornicated against Him.

In the Mosaic Law, as in the old Roman Law, adultery meant only the carnal intercourse of a wife with a man who was not her lawful husband. The intercourse of a married man with a single woman was not accounted adultery, but fornication. The penal statute on the subject, in Leviticus, xx, 10, makes this clear: "If any man commit adultery with the wife of another and defile his neighbor's wife let them be put to death both the adulterer and the adulteress" (see also Deuteronomy 22:22). This was quite in keeping with the prevailing practice of polygamy among the Israelites.

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.

Orthodox Judaism restricts sexual activity to a legally permissible marriage between a Jewish man and a Jewish woman. A man and women are even prohibited from being in a closed room alone together if they are not married, a law called yichud, nor are they allowed to have physical contact (a law referred to as negiah).

Christianity

Throughout the Old Testament, adultery is forbidden in the Ten Commandments, and punished by death. In the New Testament, Jesus took a softer stance on adultery, although he preached that it was a sin. In one story (John 8:1-11), some Pharisees brought Jesus a woman accused of committing adultery. After reminding Jesus that her punishment should be stoning, the Pharisees asked Jesus what should be done. Jesus responded, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." Jesus forgave the woman and told her not to commit adultery.

In the sixteenth century, the Catechism of the Council of Trent defines adultery as follows: "To begin with the prohibitory part (of the Commandment), adultery is the defilement of the marriage bed, whether it be one's own or another's. If a married man have intercourse with an unmarried woman, he violates the integrity of his marriage bed; and if an unmarried man have intercourse with a married woman, he defiles the sanctity of the marriage bed of another."

Considering now the act in itself, adultery, forbidden by the sixth commandment, has in it a twofold malice, in common with fornication it violates chastity, and it is, besides, a sin against justice. Drawing a distinction between these two elements of malice, certain casuists, early in the seventeenth century, declared that intercourse with a married woman, when her husband gave his consent, constituted not the sin of adultery, but of fornication. It would, therefore, they contended, be sufficient for the penitent, having committed this act, to accuse himself of the latter sin only in confession. At the instance of the Archbishop of Mechlin, the Academy of Louvain, in the year 1653, censured as false and erroneous the proposition: "Copula cum conjugata consentiente marito non est adulterium, adeoque sufficit in confessione dicere se esse fornicatum." The same proposition was condemned by Innocent XI on March 2, 1679 (Denzinger, Enchir., p. 222, 5th ed.). The falsity of this doctrine appears from the very etymology of the word adultery, for the term signifies the going into the bed of another (St. Thom., II-II:154:8). And the consent of the husband is unavailing to strip the act by which another has intercourse with his wife of this essential characterization. Again, the right of the husband over his wife is qualified by the good of human generation. This good regards not only the birth, but the nourishment and education, of offspring, and its postulates cannot in any way be affected by the consent of parents. Such consent, therefore, as subversive of the good of human generation, becomes juridically void. It cannot, therefore, be adduced as a ground for the doctrine set forth in the condemned proposition above mentioned. For the legal axiom that an injury is not done to one who knows and wills it (scienti et volenti non fit injuria) finds no place when the consent is thus vitiated.

Islam

In the Qu'ran, sex before marriage is strictly prohibited. Islam stresses that sexual relations should be restricted to the institution of marriage in order for the creation of the family; and secondly as a means to protect the family, certain relations should be considered prohibited for marriage.Fornication and adultery are both included in the Arabic word 'Zina'. Belonging primarily to the same category of crimes, entailing the same social implications and having the same effects on the spiritual personality of a human being, both, in principle, have been given the same status by the Qur'an.

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.

It is notable that same kinds of laws are in effect in some other Muslim countries also such as Saudi Arabia. However, in recent years high-profile rape cases in Pakistan have given Hudood Ordinance more exposure than similar laws in other countries.

Hinduism

Hinduism, by the holy book, the Bhagavad Gita, forbids acts of Fornication. It is considered offensive in the Hindu society as well. Due to the recent impact of the western culture, the Hindu society seems to be coming to change its strict policies. The age group most affect by western sexual influence is the teenage group, which is more easily influenced by western movies. However, it is still forbidden by Hindu law.

Alternative hindu schools of thought such as the Tantric branches of Hinduism, the Hindu practices native to India that predates centuries of conservative Islamic influence, is markedly less reserved, teaching that enlightenment can be approached through divine sex. Divine sex is one path whereby one can approach Moksha (Nirvana), a oneness with a higher spiritual level. As such, the Tantric practices, through writings such as the Kama Sutra seek not to repress sexuality, but to perfect it. By perfecting the act of divine sex, including masturbation, as seen depicted at the 10th century Hindu temple of Khajuraho, one clears the mind of earthly desires, leaving the soul on a higher level devoid of such worries, filled with bliss, and relaxed.

Buddhism

In the Buddhist tradition, under the Five Precepts and the Eightfold Path, one should neither be attached to nor crave sensual pleasure. The third of the Five Precepts is "To refrain from sexual misconduct." For most Buddhist laypeople, sex outside of marriage is not "sexual misconduct," especially when compared to, say, adultery or any sexual activity which can bring suffering to another human being. Each may need to consider whether, for them, sexual contact is a distraction or means of avoidance of their own spiritual practice or development. To provide a complete focus onto spiritual practice, fully ordained Buddhist monks may, depending on the tradition, be bound by hundreds of further detailed rules or vows that may include a ban on sexual relations. Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhism, on the other hand, teaches that sexual intercourse can be actively used to approach higher spiritual development.

Wicca

The "Charge of the Goddess" is an instruction of unknown antiquity that is recognized by many Neopagans. One part of it reads: "All acts of pleasure are my rituals." As such, Wiccans consider such activity not only normal, and healthy, but also sacred, as well as charged magically. Sex magic is considered one of the more potent branches of thelema, with sex being key to the Great Rite, itself. The Council of American Witches issued a statement about their religion during their Spring Witchmeet of 1974, held in Minneapolis, Minesota, which says, in part:

We value sexuality as pleasure, as the symbol and embodiment of Life, and as one of the sources of energies used in magickal practices and religious worship.

Adultery in Literature

The theme of adultery features in a wide range of literature through the ages. This is hardly surprising, as the fact of adultery has been a part of the human existence for as long as there has been marriage. As a theme it automatically brings its own conflict, between the people concerned and between sexual desires and a sense of loyalty; it brings intense emotions into the foreground, and has consequences for all concerned.

As marriage and family are often regarded as basis of society a story of adultery often shows the conflict between social pressure and individual struggle for happiness.

In the Bible, incidents of adultery are present almost from the start. The story of Abraham contains several incidents and serve as warnings or stories of sin and forgiveness. Abraham attempts to continue his blood line through his wife's maidservant, with consequences that continue through history. Jacob's family life is complicated with similar incidents.

Shakespeare wrote three plays in which the perception of adultery plays a significant part. In both Othello and The Winter's Tale it is the (false) belief by the central character that his wife is unfaithful that brings about his downfall. In "The Merry Wives of Windsor," an adulterous plot by Falstaff prompts elaborate and repeated revenge by the wronged wives; the comedy of the play hides a deeper anxiety about the infidelity of women.

In The Country Wife by William Wycherley, the morals of English Restoration society are satirised. The object of the rake hero is to seduce as many married ladies as possible, while blinding their husbands to what is going on by pretending to be impotent. The scheme is very successful, and it is assumed that he goes on adding more notches to his belt after the final curtain.

Other authors who have included adultery in their work are F. Scott Fitzgeraldin his work, The Great Gatsby, Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter, and John Irving in The World According to Garp. Obviously, adultery has been a popular theme in literature and will continue to be as long as marriage and adultery exist.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Blow, Adrian J. and Kelley Hartnett, Infidelity in Committed Relationships II: A Substantive Review Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, April 2005. Retrieved September 14, 2007.
• Blow, Adrian J. and Kelley Hartnett, Infiedelity in Committed Relationships I: A Methodological Review Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, April 2005. Retrieved September 14, 2007.
• Best Practices: Progressive Family Laws in Muslim Countries August 2005
• Hamowy, Ronald. Medicine and the Crimination of Sin: "Self-Abuse" in 19th Century America. pp2/3 Medicine and the Crimination of Sin: Self-Abuse
• Best Practices: Progressive Family Laws in Muslim Countries (August 2005} [2]
• Hamowy, Ronald. Medicine and the Crimination of Sin: "Self-Abuse" in 19th Century America. pp2/3 [3]
• Moultrup, David J. (1990). Husbands, Wives & Lovers. New York: Guilford Press.
• Glass, S. P., & Wright, T. L. (1992). Justifications for extramarital relationships: The association between attitudes, behaviors, and gender. Journal of Sex Research, 29, 361-387.
• Pittman, F. (1989). Private Lies. New York: W. W. Norton Co.
• Rubin, A. M., & Adams, J. R. (1986). Outcomes of sexually open marriages. Journal of Sex Research, 22, 311-319.
• Vaughan, P. (1989). The Monogamy Myth. New York: New Market Press.
• Wilson, Andrew. 1991. World Scripture: A Comparative Anthology of Sacred Texts. New York, NY: Paragon House. ISBN 0892261293

External links

• Coping with Infidelity
• Adultery Help
• Marital Statistics

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