New York “legalized” adultery: Over a century old law repealed
The American state of New York repealed a rarely applied law more than a century old, which considered marriage fraud a misdemeanor and provided for three months in prison for adulterers.
Gov. Cathy Hochul signed a law repealing the 1907 regulation, which was long considered outdated and difficult to enforce.
“Although I’ve been fortunate to share a loving married life with my husband for 40 years – which makes it somewhat ironic that I’m signing a bill decriminalizing adultery, I know that human relationships are often complex,” she said, and that “it’s clear that it is governed by individuals and not by the criminal justice system.
Adultery bans were enacted in several US states to make divorce more difficult at a time when the only way to legally dissolve a marriage was to prove that one spouse had cheated. Charges were rare, and convictions even rarer. Some states have repealed their adultery laws in recent years.
The law literally stated that adultery is when one person “engages in sexual relations with another person at a time when he has a living wife, or when that other person has a living spouse.”
That law was used for the first time a few weeks after it came into force, the New York Times wrote at the time about the arrest of a married man and a 25-year-old woman.
New York Assemblyman Charles Lavin, a sponsor of the law’s repeal, said that since the 1970s, only a dozen people have been charged under the law, and only five have resulted in convictions.
“The aim of the law is to protect the community and deter anti-social behaviour. “New York’s adultery law has not advanced any of that,” Lavin said.
The law appears to have last been used in 2010 against a woman who was caught having sex in a park, but the adultery charge was later dropped as part of a plea deal.
New York City came close to repealing the law in the 1960s, but it stayed because one politician argued that repealing it would make it look like the state was officially endorsing infidelity, according to a 1965 New York Times article.
Source: Agencies
Photo: Unsplash, Freepik
Source: bizlife.rs
