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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (68759)	10/26/2005 6:32:01 AM
From: tonto	Respond to of 81568

Wrong. There are anti adultery laws in 26 states as well as the District of Columbia. You support the breaking of laws when a democrat does it and are whining when a republican does it. You are a phoney democrat, nothing more. Get values and become someone... Three theories explain the prohibition's genesis. One is evolutionary: Men must determine which children they sire, something only strict monogamy can ensure. Another is economic: Prohibiting adultery preserves monogamous relationships and thence families, whose labor was needed for agriculture. Finally, it is said that Jews enshrined the adultery prohibition in the Ten Commandments--of which it is the seventh--to make their group more cohesive and to distinguish themselves from surrounding polygamous tribes. The United States inherited English common law, which made adultery, as well as fornication (sex between unmarried people) and sodomy (oral and anal sex), punishable crimes. In the mid and late 19th centuries, when states wrote their criminal codes, they incorporated these sex laws. Twenty-six states continue to have anti-adultery laws on the books. These laws vary considerably. Some define adultery as any intercourse outside marriage. According to others, it occurs when a married person lives with someone other than his or her spouse. In West Virginia and North Carolina, simply "to lewdly and lasciviously associate" with anyone other than one's spouse is to be adulterous. Is a single person in an adulterous relationship guilty of adultery? All but seven states punish both people involved. Colorado, Georgia, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Utah only punish the married person. In the District of Columbia and in Michigan, when a married man sleeps with an unmarried woman, only the man is guilty, but when a married woman sleeps with an unmarried man, they're both guilty. Most laws make no exceptions for couples who are separated or in the process of obtaining a divorce. Punishments also vary. Adultery is a felony in Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Idaho, and a misdemeanor everywhere else. In practice, adultery laws matter little: Only one case--against an Alabama man--has been prosecuted in the last five years. Most states have not enforced their adultery laws since World War II. Before the 1970s, when every state passed a "no fault divorce" law, adultery was usually the only reason courts would grant divorces. (Under no-fault divorce, no specific reason is required.) Charges of adultery also can be used to get a more favorable divorce settlement. Adultery also matters in the military. The Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military criminal code, bars married servicemen from having extramarital sex and unmarried servicemen from sleeping with married people. However, the rules come with qualifications. They say that the military will only prosecute when a case harms "good order and discipline" and when the adultery is "of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces." The ambiguity is intentional: Visits to prostitutes are not reasons for a court-martial, but long-term affairs and affairs between soldiers are considered dangerous and deserving of punishment. The rightwing manufactured this smear so as to portray his perfectly legal sex life as "illegal" and evil. That was their only hope of smearing him since he was such a successful and beloved president