Personally I don’t think that they should, but it would most certainly protect “the sanctity of marriage” if the man with lust in his heart for his secretary knew he could do some hard time if he acted on his inclinations.
The real question is this: with the President so concerned over the sanctity of marriage as to include it in the SoTU address, propose $1.5 billion (in a time of war and tax cuts) to promote marital bliss and with the near impossibility of turning on a TV news program or picking up a piece of supermarket journalism without the need to protect the sacred union of one man and one woman being addressed, why is it that none of the following have been proposed by anybody to the left of Fred Phelps:
*a repeal of no-fault/irreconcilable differences divorce laws
*criminalization of adultery (both the married partner and the third party)
*accelerated prosecution of deadbeat dads (I doubt there’s a forum here without an ex-spouse who’s owed thousands if not tens of thousands by one of these men/women) and domestic abusers (yes, it’s against the law, but how often are these men *really imprisoned or restrained?)
*repeal the welfare rights of unwed mothers
*criminalization of sham marriages (ala Britney Spears)
*better tax breaks to married couples
*mandatory pre-divorce marital counselling (or premarital counselling)
*illegalization of married men who go to strip clubs
Well, you get the idea… all of these, imo, would protect marriage more than refusing to open it to gays. For those who oppose gay marriage:
1- Would you support any of the above?
2- If not, what’s the distinction?
To illegalize adultery would mean that they would have to be able to monitor your emails… personal phone calls, investigate you and other stuff without judicial permission. Since the US has something called civil liberties that would make prosecuting adulterers quite hard. Well now that I mentioned it… Homeland can already do all those things to you ! Oh my… were they looking for terrorists or for bad husbands ?
Indeed, since God clearly made adultery one of the Top Ten Bad Things to Do, you would think that the religious right would be a little more incensed about such shenanigans.
Um, because it’s not about the “sanctity of marriage” but about banning something that they think is “ewwww, icky!” - just a guess. I find that most Christians, in my experience, tend to be pretty lenient on the sins in which they regularly engage (lying, coveting, adultery) , but harsh on the ones that hold no appeal for them (sticking their penis in the anus of a same-sex partner). Nothing surprising there.
Well, hell, I wouldn’t argue with a little public humiliation, but killing people goes a bit far in this day and age.
Personally, I feel that adultery should be treated the same as perjury. After all, each spouse took a solemn oath, which has been broken, possibly leading to civil ramifications.
I disagree, Rashak Mani that prosecution would require monitoring of e-mails and the like. Once the offended spouse found out, he or she could report it to the authorities. Just like any criminal matter, it could be investigated. (Which leads to the argument of how much expense are we willing to go to: appointing a special prosecutor? special investigators?) However, once a spouse was turned in, it must be irrevokable, so that a heart softened by apology would not waste the court’s time.
Not only has that one been proposed, it’s actually been made law. From an analysis of the federal tax system:
As for the others, well, I don’t see any need for government to be involved with marriage at all, and I’ve explained that belief on this board many times. As to why Bush and other politicians who claim to support marriage won’t fine adulters, criminalize sham marriages, or pass any other such legislation, it’s bad politics to impose harsh punishments on people who might vote for you. Hell, there are plenty of Congressional Republicans who would be in trouble themselves if these laws got passed.
Some states currently do criminalize adultry (I beleive that New York is one of them.) This might seem harsh at first, until you realize the reason they’re doing it. If adultry is a crime, then testimony where you confess adultry is incriminating. You do not normally get to plead the 5th in a civil case, unless you’re asked something that would allow a subsequent criminal trial. Divorce hearings are civil.
SO! If you want to keep adultry accusations out of divorce hearings, criminalize it and then people can plead the fifth.
I tend to agree with this assessment. Speaking from the Bible Belt, it might be all well and good to preach against adultery from the pulpit, but a fair number of the leading citizens of most towns, preachers/ministers included, would find themselves behind bars should this be criminalized. And they know it- it’s just not something you talk about.
Wait a minute, I thought that the reason some people outspokenly denounce homosexuality was that they secretly are gay themselves! Well, okay, I didn’t really think that. But it seems conventional pro-gay wisdom would disagree with you.
Here’s my take, as a “social conservative”, on the OP’s question: it’s a matter of not being able to get the toothpaste back in the tube. Many of the things on your list used to actually be law (very difficult divorce, criminalized adultery, no strip clubs) but those laws have changed. Once you grant new license to people, it becomes very difficult to revoke it. Similarly, it’s very difficult to restrict license people feel they have always had (e.g., shotgun weddings.) It’s much easier–and yields a much more realistic chance of success–to simply try to maintain the status quo (e.g., no gay marriage) than it is to actively push for changes in the law criminalizing things which people have gotten used to being legal.
I could see some reason to criminalize it. For one, if the Government is going to give a legal status of Married, and give benifits to this status, then perhaps protecting this status would be in order.
I have a few questions. How are you going to define adultery? Just who would benefit from this law? If the innocent spouse is not bothered, are you still going to prosecute? What about cases where the innocent spouse requests that the adultery take place? What kind of punishment do you think appropriate? Do you believe that taking people and putting them in jail, thus breaking up their family is really a better for the family than an adulterous affair going unpunished?
Voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and a partner other than the lawful spouse.*
The same people who benefit from the “defense of marriage” from gays.
The Bible makes no differential between adultery that doesn’t offend the non-guilty party and that which does, and the Bible is the basis for DOMA and other “sanctity of the union” measures, so why should we?
Stoning would seem the obvious answer, but in the tradition of the procedures for lethal injection I would suggest sterilizing the stones first. Perhaps there should be different sized stones for first, second and habitual offenders.
Of course I don’t, but it doesn’t matter what I think. We’re talking about THE HOLY INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE™as ordained and handed down by God and protected from the Infidel by DoMA (that piece of legislation proposed by the right honorable Bob Barr, funded in large part with $2 million from the Mormon Church [a Church so devoutly convinced that marriage is exclusively a union of one woman and one man that they havent had no openly polygamous leaders since World War 2] and signed into law by the virtuous and true-to-one-woman-only president Bill Clinton [the best friend that American gay-ry ever had, unless you count his signing of the two most major setbacks in their history]) and of such great concern to our current Chief Executive that he mentioned the need for its further protection and sanctification “under God” in his SoTU address. What better way to protect it than to punish those who violate it?
Sure we can. The “War on Drugs” has given birth to a whole cottage industry built around keeping non violent ‘offenders’ in jail. I think that we should start a letter writing campaign to Shrubs re-election committee and demand that they install a “War on Adultry” plank to the right wing platform.
And most Jews, in my experience, tend to be pretty lenient on the sins in which they regularly engage (pride, gossip, and fraud)
Seriously, lying and coveting are done by everyone, although it is possible to keep them to a minimum. Adultery, unless the marriage is some kind of arrangement, is something else and is certainly not “regularly” engaged in by “most Christians.” If this kind of language was used repeatedly against Jews, Moslems, or Hindus, the poster would probably not last long here, but against the Christians you can get away with a lot.
