A prominent South Korean actress has been found guilty of adultery and sentenced to a suspended six-month jail sentence, apparently meaning she won't have to actually serve the time.
This reminds me of an argument I don't often get to have. I have no problem with adultery being illegal.
Now let me say first that I don't think it should be treated as a criminal matter at all and the idea of serving jail time for adultery is ludicrous. Nonetheless, marriage is a binding legal contract and, like all contracts, the involved parties should be liable if the contract is broken.
Now, I have no idea how this plays out in court. It could very well be that cheating spouses get shafted in divorce proceedings. Either way, I take the typically-unpopular stance that I don't have a problem with laws on adultery.
PS - South Korea? Really? You guys can't be pulling that 18th century crap anymore if you want to be part of the real developed world.
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That's an interesting idea. On the surface, it makes sense, marriage being a legal contract. But here's the issue for me: I'm happy to hold people responsible for their illegal actions, but I'm not going to start moralizing about how they live their lives. So let's say you have a couple who want to be together forever, have children, live together, etc., but who have an agreement that they can sleep with other people on the side. Maybe this is part of how they keep their relationship strong, I don't know, but I don't have a problem with this arrangement. People have the right live their lives in whatever way works for them. But if this couple wants to have medical proxy rights, become the beneficiary of one anther's wills, make life simple for their kids, and a million other things, they might want to get married. It's the same reason, in my mind, that "gay people are fine with me but I don't want them "redefining" marriage" is a ridiculous argument - these people want the rights and conveniences that come with that legal contract. So what do we do about this theoretical couple, if adultery is illegal? Create another, half-marriage option? Make adultery only punishable if the afflicted spouse files a claim?
ReplyDeleteI agree with you strongly though I was in some ways unclear (this seems to be a common theme). I have absolutely no problem with the many kinds of relationships you listed and, for the record, am not opposed to consenting adults being allowed to marry into any one of them (that is, not only do I oppose the "man and woman" definition, I don't see any reason to include the word "one" either).
ReplyDeleteAnd of course you're right that if spouses don't want fidelity to be legally required in their marriage then that's completely their business. What I didn't think about was the fact that what this means is that each marriage would be preceded, if the participants choose, by some sort of contract that lays out, among other things, whether adultery should come with consequences and what those consequences should be. Now, if only I could find a way to make something like that commonplace ...