New York State Legislators Vote to Decriminalize Adultery- A Look at the Controversial Law

Although it is little known to the public, in the state of New York, since 1907, “cheating” on the couple, as they say in colloquial Spanish, is a B misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail or a $500 fine. This week, in the final stretch of approval of the fiscal year 2025 budget, State legislators voted overwhelmingly to delete this provision from the criminal code.

Since 1972, just 13 people have been accused of adultery. Of them, only five were convicted of the crime. In practically each of these cases, There was another felony involved, and the prosecutor added adultery, as one of the many crimes committed.

New York legal texts declare a person guilty of adultery when they have sexual relations with another person, while you have a living spouse.

After passing unanimously in the Codes Committee last week, the project to eliminate this law was approved in the full chamber this Monday, with a vote of 137 to 10 and in the Senate it was voted on Wednesday, with 57 votes in favor.

A law that is not applied

Under the idea that the State does not have to regulate consensual sexual behavior between adults, the Democratic Assemblyman Charles Lavinepresented the proposal A.4714to repeal and decriminalize the act of adultery in the State of New York.

Lavine believes this step is important as it allows for the elimination of what He describes it as an “archaic” law.

“This outdated statute criminalizes consensual sexual behavior between adults. It’s time we removed it from the criminal code. “If a law is not applied, there is no reason for it to be maintained,” he stressed.

New York lawmakers have tried to repeal the ban on adultery, for 60 years, when a commission determined that enforcement of the state’s ban on adultery was virtually impossible and “a question of private morality, not of law”.

“The law on adultery, when it was used, had as its center women who were threatened by men telling them that if they tried to divorce, they would accuse them of adultery”said the Democratic state senator Liz Krueger, one of the sponsors of the bill. .

Governor Kathy Hochul’s office indicated that “will review the legislation.”

Adultery remains illegal in Oklahoma, Michigan and Wisconsinsince the vast majority of states decriminalized it.

How to analyze The New York Timeswhen New York banned adultery for the first time in 1907, it was common for states to pass laws criminalizing sexual relations outside of marriage. “Just a few weeks after the law went into effect, a married railroad contractor and a 25-year-old woman he was dating were the first people arrested and charged with adultery,” according to records shared by the New York newspaper.

The last time someone was convicted of adultery in NY, It was in 2010.

The data:

• “cuckolding” is an idiom used in Spanish for centuries, according to the Royal Academy of Language, which is defined as “lacking or failing the faith of marriage.”

2024-04-04 21:20:19
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