Adultery and the Law

Doesn't the fact that these links are all links to news stories (from across the globe, too) say something?

If it was so great a threat to society, wouldn't this stuff be "not news"?

How about all the other crimes that are committed? What are the causes of those? Should those "causes" be criminalised too? Or should we just deal with the actual crimes?

 

Well, actually, I have a lot of cases that are related to cheating, but, I cannot disclose them as it would be breach of confidentiality. They're not on the news. I'm just posting things that are already in the public domain.

With respect to "other crimes" that's opening up another can of worms. For example, why punish prostitution? Why punish drug use? If you don't subscribe to the idea of dissuading socially destructive behavior, I would be interested in listening to the justification for illegalizing drug use.

 

Personally, I would look very seriously at decriminalising drug use. It's a different, and complex, subject that I won't go into here in detail. It's also quite tightly linked to prostitution.

My point here is that the argument you are making is similar to banning football (soccer to Americans) because of hooliganism. Simply type "football hooligan" into either Google or Youtube and you will see what I mean. My opinion is that we have perfectly adequate laws to punish trouble-makers.

The experience you have in your court is self-selecting. These are people who have allegedly broken the law. Can you imagine how long your list would be if it also included large numbers of those accused of adultery - whether the accusation is malicious or true? And would it stamp out adultery? I very much doubt it.

This is a case of people using adultery as an excuse (or mitigation) for their behaviour. That's all. My wife committed adultery and I did none of those things. Nor do most people.

Using one bad law to justify another doesn't make sense to me.

Edit: Oh .. I just thought .. statistically, most marital breakups happen just after the Christmas break. Should we ban Christmas?

 

And how many stories of people picking up and moving on with their life do you think you might find?
--- merged: Dec 17, 2011 3:19 PM ---
I would just like to back up Alistair's comments and add that we should be concentrating on actual crimes rather than inventing new ones.
People kill their spouses over money quite often, too. What should be done about that?
Nothing, because nothing can be done about it.

There are bad things that people do. Yes, fucking around on your spouse is bad. I don't think you will find anyone here making a counter-argument to that. But there is no way of making it legally 'better' for the estranged spouse. What people need is emotional support and guidance to refocus and move on. We can't expect our government to make things better and our legal system is not equipped to take on the strain of punishing marital infidelity.

It seems really odd to me that in this day and age, with all of the challenges and dilemmas that we face, that adultery is all of a sudden something of utmost importance that we should be focusing so much attention on. We have to fix fucking around.

Um, I'm just not buying it.

 

I would bet that most of those who want to criminalize adultery (or oppose decriminalizing it where laws are on the books) are the puritanical extremists who want to impose their values regarding marriage on everyone. I bet some of them are closet adulterers as well.

But on the lighter side:

A shot at the hypocrites among the "family values" crowd that just loved Cain and now Gingrich.

Adultery is a civil matter at best and has a place in divorce proceedings and child custody disputes. Beyond that, what goes on privately between two consenting adults is not the state's business.

 

I'd argue that Sports produces enough social "good" to counter-balance the negativity associated with sports (drunken and disorderly acts, DUIs, etc.). In my mind, sports generates enough employment, economic activity, and entertainment (so that people have something to do), that the criminal acts associated with sports are, on balance, far outweighed by the social positives. In contrast, adultery produces very little social good.

However, your point is well taken. My point was never such that, people who've been cheated on, or are cheating on others, invariably end up committing a sort of crime. Just that an inordinately large amount of criminal cases have adultery or one of it's many varied offspring as causes for the criminal conduct. I'm not saying it's an excuse. I just was thinking in terms of disincentivizing unproductive behavior.

 

why single out adultery on these grounds? why not make the arguments about the "need" to criminalize divorce?

the underlying argument is utilitarian. what use is a utilitarian argument if there's no data about outcomes? compare, say, problems in the articles above to some non-anecdotal data...or to saudi arabia, that model place that has very similar laws about adultery.

 

Kirstang...as an attorney, do you think the Court's decision in the Lawrence v Texas sodomy case is broad enough to cover adultery...that private consensual sexual conduct is protected under the 14th amendment?

 

Not disagreeing with you, but for what it's worth, Adultery is already criminal in both Maryland and to an extent, in Florida.
--- merged: Dec 17, 2011 3:55 PM ---

I love Lawrence v. Texas...and that's an awesome question that gives me a legal boner.

Yes, I do think Lawrence v. Texas, on its face, supplies ammunition to strike down A LOT of laws. In effect, Lawrence v. Texas rejected morality as a basis for criminalization--explicitly overruling Bowers which upheld morality as a legitimate state interest. However, the effects of Lawrence are still unclear--for example, if we cannot legislate Morality, why is prostitution, incest, polygamy, or bigamy still illegal?

I could whack off for hours thinking about this. I'll post more later as I have to run now.

 

I don't find anyone here who is advocating for adultery and who doesn't admit that it can cause harm both to individual families and to society. But the stance you've taken is that the harm to society is greater and of greater concern than others here regard it.

Starting from a point where all are in agreement that there is some harm to society, making a case for criminalization will take more than drawing a straight line between every adulterous act and extreme reactions of violence, drug and alcohol abuse, and severe emotional damage, which is all you've basically done so far.

We're I to concede that in these extreme cases there might be some room for judicial interference, what would you propose be done with adulterers where no such outcome resulted? Make an example of them anyway?- In the hopes it will deter them from repeat offenses and others who might one day be tempted to commit adultery and whose adulterous acts might potentially result in someone getting badly hurt? Has a crime been committed if there is no clear victim? In certain instances, we'd all agree, yes. Would you liken the adulterer to someone who has been pulled over for drunk driving? - No clear victim, but the potential he might harm someone is great . Statistics regarding loss of life and damage caused by drunk driving bear out the public's concern over it and justify pro-active measures.

Where are the statistics to back up your claim that the harm caused to society by adultery is sufficient to warrant great concern? I'm sorry but individual impressions of anything, based solely on one's own frame of reference, is inadequate to convince me that a grave problem even exists.

This is not the product of liberal mindedness, unless applying reason and requiring proof is now totally outside of centrist or conservative thinking, which I know it's not.

I'm sure you've considered what sort of evidence would be required to convict adulterous offenders and I look forward to hearing how you've sorted that out but I'd really like to see the "harm to society" data first. Your proposal is a non-starter without it.

 

The happy Moral Fairy will pay for the extra governance, I think

 

utilitarian arguments are easy and fun. if you define adultery as a "social problem" and then propose a law to mitigate it, you necessarily produce a "social good" because putting a minus sign in front of a problem is better than putting a negative sign in front of a problem. but really the trick lay in defining it as a problem, which is, in this case, simply an assertion. and that's all it takes to get the often silly train of utilitarian hydraulics to start. why is adultery a social problem? because the conservatives among us say it is. what is that based on? the fact that they say it is and then wave their hands around in the general direction of anecdotes of varying degrees of colorfulness. if one does not find the hand-waving compelling, one is a "liberal" or, in other terms, one of Them. We find this sort of nonsense compelling. that is how We know who We are. you don't have to demonstrate anything in utilitarian mode--the terms are typically defined just as these are, and the "remedies" that follow are just as circular.

marriage means lots of different things in different places--just because it's referred to with the same noun in english doesn't mean that everything is identical. but the same holds for mountains or shoes or wombats, really. but when you're dealing with a social institution, it typically makes some sense to have an idea of what you're actually talking about. unless this is just another matter of assertion. the status of adultery varies along with the nature of marriage---so it's a context-dependent variable. so you really can't talk coherently about adultery without situating it in at least some sociological frame(s) that let marriage mean something particular. for example, adultery in an 18th century french aristocratic family was more or less given because the marriages were about property---but in other places, where marriage is also about property, the opposite holds. there are cultures of honor/display in both, but they're turned differently if you like. so adultery is very different things in each. in the context of a bourgeois nuclear family, it's largely a private matter. unless you can come up with some way to equate bourgeois nuclear marriage practices with other types of practices so that they become social institutions in a similar way (by social here i mean departing from and referring back to a status grid, so, or other networks that extend beyond the couple and give the marriage a social meaning)...because without them, you'd have a hard time arguing that adultery is a social issue--and still less problem---at all.

typically, there has to be some agreed-upon reality to appeal to. without that, utilitarian arguments are nothing other than "i like this" or "i don't like this" transposed from the idiosyncratic aesthetic world into the world of fake social pronouncements. but assembling this image of reality is tedious and time-consuming, so usually people just wave their hands and rely on whatever fabrication "common sense" is supposed to refer to at that moment. "common sense" reality is whatever i say it is. it's whatever you say it is. it's nothing at all. the beauty of "common sense" reality is precisely its vaporous circularity, that it moves with your hand-waving and never poses messy data problems and certainly can never be appealed to in order to demonstrate that the central claim utilitarians use (by which i mean people who make this sort of argument) to justify their positions---that it produces a "Greater Social Good"---does not happen. greater than what, you might wonder? well, see the first step in bundling "adultery" (the term at hand here) together with "problem"---that's all it takes. presto chango.

 

Man, all these comments are going to be a bitch to reply to tonight. 'Tis a symptom of the majority-view here when only two people argue for something and the rest of the bunch against it, piling argument upon argument on top. Responding to Alistair alone in a proper manner already takes a good chunk of my time. Probably should learn to write faster, but what you gonna do?

Alistair

1. You're the one misrepresenting me, not the other way around. I said "Your opinion is strongly biased in favor of adultery". Very different, because it doesn't mean you support adultery, but you have a predisposition against punishment-related (or any form of legal consequences) advocacy on adultery, simply because of this:

And this:

What do these two quotes tell me? For one, I'd argue that your admission of having "strayed" makes you more sympathetic of adulterers in general because you let your discipline/morals/resolve/whatchamacallit slip when you did whatever you did with the girls, and have rationalized and made it more acceptable; at the very least to yourself.

Second, I'd argue that whatever stance/opinion against adultery you may have had, the fact that the wife you loved, the mother of your children and the woman you shared a good portion of your life with, cheated on you, causing you to become desensitized to the issue. I'd argue that you clearly rationalized the matter in a way that made you feel better about it and appropriated sufficient blame on yourself to cope with it/not let your anger/hate/frustration take over. These are just examples of the possible emotions that were at play in your case. There's a myriad of thoughts and reasonings that may have occurred. Also, just to clarify, it is my belief that whoever committed adultery is 100% to blame, as there are plenty other avenues to take from a possibly emotionally/physically-abusive relationship or one where you are simply dissatisfied. Divorce being one of them.

I'm talking about this part here:

Now, if your initial reaction to her affair was that of understanding and didn't cause significant emotional hurt, I'd be mighty surprised, not least because of this:

Assuming the case that you did respond much less severely than I'm presuming, that makes you de facto biased in favor of adultery from my point of view, because I'd argue that growing up/living in our great Western societies with the rampant adultery going about desensitized you to the whole issue as a matter of course.

Or I could argue you didn't love her completely, didn't cherish her more than anything in the world, didn't emotionally invest yourself in the marriage with her, didn't treasure her loyalty to you; lessening the impact on you when you found out. Maybe you had a psychological defense mechanism for cases like these and acted pre-emptively right from the beginning of your relationship with her? Maybe you saw the rampant adultery in our societies and concluded that you're better off not investing too much in your partner in case she strays? Maybe you couldn't have given less of a shit what was happening (again, unlikely given the trust issues you mentioned)?

Pick and choose, really. At least you're held in respect by the likes of mixedmedia for not whining like a pussy and getting on with your life.

2.

My case was based on a general understanding of humanity, psychology and ethics/morals/"religious bigotry". My case also rests on seeking justice for the harm caused to society, not only to the immediate environment. Those are topics/basis points that can very sufficiently be debated on by being general, but I realize this forum loves referencing (oh, how I hate the referencing process in university papers).

What you quoted there is my case, and I do not see any of you refuting it but continuously dismiss punitive consequences to destructive behavior (which makes zero sense to me), based on nothing more than your, individually-based ethical values regarding criminal punishment for "social crimes"; which is ironic because everyone's blowing the "don't be a judge of morality" trumpet here, or most.

Now, if you want specific cases, KirStang has much better inside knowledge on the real, tangible harm adultery causes than I could have, has provided a list of news cases gone bad and has alluded to the extent of the number of these cases being greater than one can ascertain from the news feed:

What you have argued so far is:

I never argued that adultery and the mentioned crimes are mutually inclusive of each other. This is not a linear function of x = y, or x + y = z. Crimes happen for a plethora of reasons, but you (and most others in this thread so far: see Sports team enthusiasm argument by Cayvmann) are neglecting to discern between the different categories of causes for these crimes. Admittedly, I assumed that was a no-brainer and didn't elaborate on it.

Your argumentation regarding the different causes of these crimes essentially puts every single possible cause for them at the exact same level.

Let's take a look at Cayvmann's stated example reason for some crimes: Sports team enthusiasm.

KirStang summed my point of view up very well in this comment:

Your argument is weak, because you completely omit positive and negative externalities of certain patterns of behavior. Something I wouldn't expect from a Management Consultant, but now that it's mentioned I'm sure you're on my train of thought. Further, there's an almost innumerable amount of reasons that can cause low self-esteem. Things like "my favorite make-up ran out and I have no money/maxed my credit... I'm going to be ugly again". Go prosecute the make-up company, or the credit card company? Of course not.

It essentially comes down to the benefit vs. liability of behaviour to society in order to determine whether a specific cause should be abolished from society, or not.

So far we have established on, apparently, all parties of this debate an universal agreement that adultery does cause harm to society. Next to it, adultery has zero (name and support them, if you believe otherwise) positive externalities, i.e. no benefit to society. It does, however, have plenty of negative externalities: namely the examples I mentioned at the very beginning and which you quoted, and the crimes listed by KirStang.

Now comes the question: why on all that is holy on this planet are people so up in arms about the issue of criminalizing it? If there is one real, legitimate concern (not that ethics-based, opinionated stuff from mixedmedia) here, it is the abuse of anti-adultery laws. Joniemack mentioned the issue of acceptable evidence, and truth be told, it is also something I am concerned about. It's great to have an ideal, but the implementation of it is of a much higher importance.

That said, I'm not a legal expert. I am not familiar enough with all the legal technicalities and realities, nor qualified, to make an educated suggestion on how to ensure that abuse of the law in the courts of law doesn't happen.

However, simply because I do not know the answer to ensuring proper implementation of the law, does not in any possible way mean there is no solution to this. It has to be found, but I (and apparently everyone else on here) haven't seen a reasonable, rational search for an answer to this question. As roachboy has adequately put it in his comment on Page 4, the Arab/other Muslim countries have done a terrible, terrible job implementing such laws, and an even worse job implementing Sharia Law. Honestly though, it is my opinion that Muslim countries are mostly fucked up because of their constant mingling of their cultures into Islam; but that's an entirely different matter by itself.

Nevertheless, my case still stands.

3.

A t least we're in agreement there. Now tell me. Given my above wall of text, what is your continued argumentation?

4.

I understand and agree with your entire argument. I hold myself to my highest standards and would love, if more people were on my skill level and had my discipline (especially in the business world); but I have the German mentality in this: I couldn't care less what you do, as long as it doesn't involve/harm other people without their consent or against their will.

Adultery is incompatible with that mindset.

5.

Hey, I do to you what you do to me. Just worse.

On a serious note, I do honestly see much of the community this way. Can't be helped.

Doesn't mean I like them less, but the analyst in me wants to ascertain these things about the people I share a space with.

 

Please Remixer or Kirstang, point out to me where adultery played a role in the very first example you offered as evidence for your assertions.

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2011/12/donna_diazs_boyfriend_accused.php
--- merged: Dec 17, 2011 7:17 PM ---
And your 2nd example fails to prove that there was any actual adulterous act behind the shooting.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/wife-87-shoots-husband-88-985612

3rd example?
- broken link.

4th example? The article does not reveal whether or not an actual adulterous affair occurred or if the entire scene was motivated by jealously and suspicion.

How many links do I have to go through to find some actual evidence that any of these responses were based on an actual adulterous act?

Maybe we should be criminalizing jealousy and suspicion instead.

So where is this benefit vs. liability figure which might allow us to make the determination? Still waiting.

 

Regarding the first article.

Joniemack , the articles were not important to my argumentation anyway. Nor do the links all have to feature adultery.

For all intents and purposes, that one article is already enough.

 

It looks to me as if this was about jealousy (no proof of any affair).

Let's make jealousy illegal!

(I'll come back later and try to respond to your post to me, Remixer)

 

No worries, take your time. I'm done debating tonight anyway. This week are my final exams for the semester.

There was no proof, sure, but when does a spouse stop to provide evidence when they lose it and attack their partner based on recent knowledge of adultery having happened?
--- merged: Dec 17, 2011 7:40 PM ---

True, I have an allergy when I see complete hypocrites. You accuse me of pretending to be some universal truthbender who creates infallible logic and perfect reasoning based on my flawed moral/ethical values, and then you go on and, while singing the high-horse-morality song, make completely opinionated and judgmental points like these:

Yeah, completely logic-based rationality must have been involved there. Apologies for committing to my superiority-complex too much to care for how you believe I should address you and the super-constructive things you say. It is clear (like my God-given brain) that I attempt to subdue everyone in every single discussion. After all, it is the natural order of things.

Or maybe I simply dislike the way you express your thoughts. Or maybe I find pseudo-psychoanalysts laughable.

Either way, I have no interest in continuing this sideshow beyond this point.

 

Enough for what? Enough to assume that the cell phone content was proof of adultery and hence the cause of the confrontation was adultery rather than jealously and suspicion? If the articles don't bolster your argument, why repost them?

This post leads me to believe that you yourself are possibly not so convinced your argument can stand up to reasonable scrutiny. It's your opinion. Maybe you should leave it at that.
--- merged: Dec 17, 2011 7:47 PM ---

--- merged: Dec 17, 2011 7:40 PM ---

I've think you've just dug your own hole with this comment.

 

Honestly, you seem to have it out to try and find whatever slight crack possible to build a case to completely dismiss my points. May happen, but doesn't look like it so far.

Either way, here's my relevant point in regards to the articles:

I employed KirStang and his comments as supportive arguments for my case. I didn't even check the articles until you went into investigative-reporter mode. EDIT: Admittedly, that is my fault. Though, I don't see how this more than minimally affects my argumentation.

I love how you mention it's my opinion, when everything in that comment of yours is nothing more than your opinion with a good amount of conjecture.

How about you disseminate my argumentation and at the very least have the courtesy to seriously attempt a counter-argumentation instead of trying to dismiss a comment, on which I just spent a good amount of time to be as thorough and logically-constructive as possible, based on some relatively unimportant news articles I haven't even looked at?

Thanks, though.
--- merged: Dec 17, 2011 8:05 PM ---

I have nothing further to say on that than this:

Either way, done for tonight.

 

making a logical machine do what it's supposed to do is easy, remixer. and that you set one into motion is fine, i suppose---it's a kind of baseline expectation, though, isn't it? that there be an argument, that there be a logical machine of some kind. so the problem(s) folk are trying to point out include: your attempt to define the variables, how you define them, what the criteria for that definition are. this is the standard problem of the relation between axioms and proof, or, rather, between the rules that define a variable in general is defined in the context of a type of argument and the way a specific variable is constructed in a particular application of that type of argument.

so you're making a utilitarian argument and seem to imagine that it's enough to be formally consistent. it's like you want a prize for not fucking it up. ok, your logic is consistent with what is typical of a utilitarian argument. well played.

but the variables you're trying to assert---not argue---to do with adultery and its status as a social problem--aren't flying for folk. kirstang does a version of the same thing, but with a bit more in the way of anecotal links (as if that's what links to information do typically when they're posted here, which indicates that you don't read them)....

so the alternative seems to me to be: reframe for yourself what the basis of the argument is----there is a real problem with your definitions here, and you don't want to address them. instead, you're dodging and weaving, getting into ad hominem exchanges while complaining about ad hominem exchanges, etc.

personally, i don't find the arguments compelling, but it's tiresome to see things flailing about like this as if you are the only person making logically consistent claims and everyone else is just being an asshole or a liberal or whatever.