Should adultery be re - criminalized?

[SlowFJH]

There's been a plethora of threads from OW in recent days. The general feeling on MN seems to be "cheating is always wrong". Yet most "civilised" countries have removed "Thou shalt not commit adultery" from their statute books many years ago. Was this a mistake?

Of course in those same countries it is still a legitimate grounds for divorce.

But you have never stated your view in respect of why you think the MN view is that cheating is wrong (clearly a fallacy because MN is a forum of individuals) or why you think cheating is not wrong.

You started this thread with the ridiculous conflation that people who think cheating is wrong (the MN view apparently) will likely want adultery recriminalised...

This all rather feels like a thread about your own smugness with your 'better' moral standards..:

And you keep presuming the right to pick apart my moral standards without articulating your own and picking apart my assertion that you are misguided in conflating law and morality whilst being unwilling to read about the issue yourself.

It isn't my job to answer all your questions about the difference between law and morality. Do some reading on the subject yourself. Come up with an argument for why law and morality are the same thing.

I don't think I have ever said anything about "The MN view". That would be like saying "The Twitter view". I have disagreed with you personally and the view that "Affairs are always morally wrong".

My view is that I can't impose my morals on you and would want to. If you impose your morals on me I will likely say a polite "No ta".

Also I have never said "MN will probably want adultery recriminalized." I asked "Do you think it should?" You (Offred) said No. I agree with you on that.

Would not want to

The general feeling on MN seems to be "cheating is always wrong". Yet most "civilised" countries have removed "Thou shalt not commit adultery" from their statute books many years ago. Was this a mistake?

Your morals seems to include thinking that there should never be absolutes. Your thread is about telling people they are wrong for thinking there are...

Do you think there is any irony in thinking or arguing that it is absolutely wrong for people to have absolute moral standards on things?

And me having any kind of moral standards for myself does not impose anything on anyone else.

Meh

Offred you are being so aggressive - it's not doing you any favours.

In the OP which you just quoted, slow deos not say that she thinks MN is wrong - just that it is somewhat at odds with the decriminalising of adultery. She specifically doesn't say which she believes is right - society, MN or neither or both.

Can't quite understand why you have been quite so personally aggreived by a theoretical debate. Seems unlike you

I'm irritated about being preached to by someone who IMO is misinformed about law, which is my particular area of interest, and who will not engage with any discussion but prefers to be evasive and critical of other people and other ideas without articulating the basis of their disagreement.

The op is expecting me personally to analyse the law piece by piece in order to disprove the idea that law and morality are different things but will not make any argument about why they are or respond to my argument about why they aren't. The op misquotes and mischaracterises my posts to do this which is irritating.

The whole thing comes across as 'my way is better, everyone else is wrong' whilst accusing other people of pushing their views on people.

So I am irritated. Because this is irritating. It's not a discussion in any way shape or form.

Wedding vows are the most solemn and public vows it's possible to make. At least on a par with the affirmation/vow you make when serving on a Jury.

They aren't complicated, and are made under each party's own free will.

I appreciate criminalising adultary may not be practical, for a variety of reasons. However, after being married for 8 years, I could have an affair, devastate my wife, and take half her stuff, completely without comeback. That feels wrong to me.

I would at least like adultary to carry some weight in the divorce (civil) courts. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think it does at the moment.

That is presuming all affairs lead to divorce though.

I think lots of things are morally wrong but shouldn't be illegal, including voting BNP, posting Britain First memes on Facebook, driving a four wheel drive car exclusively in South London and buying the Daily Mail.

There is no good way that criminalizing adultery would go, and a lot of vulnerable people, mostly women, would suffer. The harm would, IMO, outweigh the good. That doesn't mean it isn't a shitty thing to do. But horrible and illegal are not and should not be the same thing.

Offred

You insist that a society's moral beliefs has nothing to do with its laws. Where, then, do you think laws come from? Why do we in the UK have a different set of laws to e.g. Saudi Arabia?

What do you think of this:

"To the chagrin of some (Holmes, 1897), law trades in morals. At a minimum, the law prescribes and proscribes morally laden behaviors, but it also unabashedly attempts to shape moral attitudes and beliefs. When the law forbids murder, we know that this is because the law has decided that murder is evil, and wishes all citizens to agree with that assessment. When the law demands ‘‘good Samaritanism’’ in certain circumstances, we understand it to reflect a judgment that failing to aid those in distress is not just (perhaps) wasteful or inefficient, but is morally wrong.

The ambition of anti-discrimination laws is not just to change the behaviors of employers, landlords, and school administrators, but to change both cognitions about and emotions toward stereotyped groups (Allport, 1954). Sometimes, the law engages in moral regulation even where it cannot plausibly be aiming to change behaviors, attitudes, or emotions; the law simply expresses moral commitments shared (often very controversially) by the polity at large. "

Bilz, K. and Nadler, J. (2009) "Law, Psychology, and Morality", Psychology of Learning and Motivation, vol. 50

I think laws both shape and are shaped by current moral values. A society's morals change over time as can an individual's.

As for the topic of the thread, it's good to question traditional beliefs. It doesn't mean we want to show they're wrong, just to check that they are right and to understand them, maybe.

I think cheating is immoral because it's harmful to others and it's dishonest. Whether a particular case of adultery is cheating or not, or how bad a case of cheating it is, depends on the individual circumstances.

Therefore adultery should not be a criminal offence. Where adultery is/was a criminal offence I think it is due to religious and sexist/misogynist influences rather than any concern about harm done to the people involved.

"Wedding vows are the most solemn and public vows it's possible to make. At least on a par with the affirmation/vow you make when serving on a Jury."

I disagree.

Or rather I agree that wedding vows are 'solemn and public' and are the basis of a contract of partnership between two people . However, it is essentially a mutual, private matter between the two of them. When people are sworn onto a jury, or take he Hippocratic oath or other serious public service it is a matter that is at the heart of democracy, justice, and serving society as a whole. This is way more serious than a private relationship between two individuals. And why people who abuse the trust given to them on the basis of those oaths, such as jurors in contempt of court or those who commit perjury, or bent coppers or dodgy doctors, find themselves subject to prosecution.

That's a psychology paper. Why would psychology researchers understand law?

Law undoubtedly shapes some areas of collective morality acting as a check on morality. Law is made based on assessments of harm and appropriateness of legislating. Morality is also based on assessments of harm. They often overlap but that does not mean law is made or administrated based on morality.

Criminal law is based on assessment of harm to the public, civil law is based on harm to an individual.

Yes, lots of people conflate morality and law but they are not the same thing and law is not based on morality. The foundation of common law was the protection of property. The foundation of other types of law was the protection of religious values which are also not the same as morality.

Even equity talks about what is unconscionable not what is moral.

My argument is not 'morality and law have nothing to do with each other' it is 'morality and law are separate things so people thinking cheating is morally wrong implies nothing about how they feel about cheating being legally wrong'

It's the statements like 'in the past adultery was considered so wrong it was illegal' - that is not an accurate assessment.

In the past adultery by a woman was considered to damage her value as a piece of male property and so it was legislated against.

What changed is that society and the law came to accept that women are not chattels. Many of the developments in the law came about as a result of societal pressures like war etc. Many people still consider women to be subordinate to men, which is an example of the law placing a check on society and collective morals.

It's a paper in the journal 'Law, Psychology and Morality'.

Why wouldn't researchers in law, psychology and morality understand the connection between law and morality? And how about playing the ball, not the man?

Now you say "My argument is not 'morality and law have nothing to do with each other'"

but at 00:02 this morning you said "Law. Has. Nothing. To. Do. With. Morality."

I don't think anyone is claiming they are one and the same thing. But they reflect on each other.

Yeah it's fairly obvious you're irritated offred

I usually walk away when I feel the bile rising like that because it's just strangers' words on a screen innit?

Autocorrect was determined to make that bike riding not bile rising

Because they don't have a legal background and the points they make about murder clearly show that.

Killing is morally wrong is not the same as unlawful killing is illegal. Murder, for example, is an offence which denotes a particular way in which the law states someone should be held legally culpable for their harmful behaviour.

It's a criminal offence because not prohibiting/punishing murder causes difficulty for the rule of law and the functioning of society. Not because it is morally wrong.

The post at midnight is unclear, yes, it was late. The whole thing is the op keeps reiterating that certain parts of the law are administrated by moral values when they are not, the thread began with the idea that thinking cheating is absolutely wrong implies people think it should be legislated against.

Moral arguments are not made in the administration of law, legal arguments are. That's why I'm judicial review something can be absolutely abhorrent but be upheld because it is technically correct and why contracts can be upheld even if it wouldn't be moral to do so.

Morality is subjective, even collective morality. The law is a set of rules and principles which are applied in order to regulate society. If legal decisions were made based on moral arguments then the law would be entirely arbitrary.

Equity is the closest to morality and it is only used to supplement in the case of manifest unfairness. The law itself has no morality.