The Typical American's Moral Views

According to polling by Gallup, Americans' views on various issues of relationships and morality continue to evolve.  As of 2013 the majority of Americans view same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, divorce, sex outside of marriage, and having a child outside of marriage as morally acceptable.  Adultery remains unpopular.  Polygamy also remains unpopular although the percentage of Americans viewing polygamy as morally acceptable has doubled since 2001.

Adultery Laws: When Enacted

Today's post looks at when adultery laws were enacted.  Based on A Guide to America's Sex Laws published in 1996, Louisiana was the last state to enact an adultery law.  More precisely, Louisiana defined that adultery was grounds for a divorce in 1990.  I suspect this legal change decriminalized adultery but kept it as grounds for divorce.

In more recent adultery law news, Colorado repealed its adultery law in 2012.

Adultery Laws: Takes Two to Tango?

My mother always liked to comment on infidelity by pointing out that it "takes two to tango" and thus assign fault to both partners in an affair.  Do the country's most defunct adultery laws though take the same path and punish both partners in an extramarital affair equally?  The answer is:  it depends...depended...upon the state.

A plurality (orange/tan states) of those states with adultery laws in 1996 punished only the married partner.  Many of these states did not criminalize adultery per se but allowed adultery to be used as grounds for a divorce.  Another large chunk of states (green states) have statutes punishing both partners.  Delaware, Minnesota and the District of Columbia stand out as unusual exceptions.

• Delaware's statute is written almost as if the writers did not envision a woman having an affair.  This state's law speaks only to punishing a cheating husband.
• DC's statute punishes both the man and woman if both are married.  If the woman is married and the man is not, both are again punished.  BUT, if the woman is unmarried and the man is married, then only the man is punished.
• Minnesota's statute is almost the reverse of DC's law. If you are a married MN man and cheat with a married woman:  punished!  If you are a married MN woman and cheat with an unmarried man:  punished!  But if you are a philandering married MN man who cavorts with an unmarried woman:  not a crime!

Adultery Laws

As yesterday's post highlighted, marital infidelity is common.

All the Abrahamic religions -Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Baha'ism- however prohibit adultery.  Judaism and Christianity enshrine the sin of adultery in the Ten Commandments to emphasize adultery's seriousness.  Ironically then perhaps, however, adultery in contemporary America is not a major political issue among social conservatives.  From a legal and social viewpoint, adultery has been largely relegated to a private affair between a married couple and -mostly- now outside the purview of court system.

In the past, however, every state had a law outlawing adultery in some way.  Before all states instituted no fault divorce in the 1970s, adultery was often the only grounds for a divorce, and each state had a law outlining adultery as cause for a legal divorce.  

The most recent comprehensive listing of adultery laws I could find come from A Guide to America's Sex Laws published in 1996.  While apparently 23 states still have adultery laws on their books, most legal scholars believe the US Supreme Court's 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision upholding a constitutional right to private, consensual sex pretty much invalidates the remaining adultery laws.  

By 1996 most of the Western states had eliminated their adultery statutes.  A number of others retained adultery only as a legal grounds for divorce or grounds for barring an adulterous spouse from legal right to property.  

For most states criminalizing adultery, the statute defined the crime as a misdemeanor.  Five states, however, defined adultery as a felony in 1996:  Idaho, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Michigan, and Massachusetts.  Three Deep South states -Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina- have statutes which appear to make adultery a crime only if the adulterous pair are actually cohabitating.  The laws from Massachusetts and Michigan mirror each other including a caveat that if a couple divorces but then live together, then they can be charged with adultery.

The Scarlet Letter and Polling America

Majority: 

Morally Approve of:

• interracial marriage

• divorce

• sex between unmarried partners ("fornication")

• having a child out of wedlock

• same-sex marriage

Morally Disapprove of:

• adultery

• polygamy

American laws regarding sexual behaviors have changed considerably over the past half century.  Fifty years ago, American public opinion and the associated legal landscape looked very different from today:

• Divorce:  the vast majority of states allowed divorce only for "fault" -adultery, cruelty, etc.
• Adultery -an extramarital affair:  illegal 
• Fornication -sex outside marriage:  illegal
• Interracial Marriage:  illegal in most states
• Sex and Even Affectionate Intimacy Between Same-sex Partners: illegal
• Having a Child Out of Wedlock:  shamed to the point of charities operating homes for unwed mothers to "hide" from society while pregnant

As Gallup polling data from circa 2001 to 2013 shows, the majority of Americans now morally approve of:

• interracial marriage
• divorce
• sex between unmarried partners ("fornication")
• having a child out of wedlock
• same-sex marriage

Even for polygamy -being married to multiple partners at the same time- the percentage of Americans morally approving has doubled in the past 12 years.

Noticeably unchanged, however, is moral approval for extramarital sex.  Adultery polls only at 6-7% in moral approval.  Infidelity remains morally unacceptable to most Americans.  Interestingly -and I cannot find the study where I read this- moral disapproval of infidelity drops as the age of the respondent increases.  Perhaps because they have lived through their own infidelities as cheater or betrayed, the older an American becomes the more likely he or she is to be forgiving towards a marital infidelity.  The most disapproving of Americans by age are in turn the youngest respondents on polls of adults.  

Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery

Majority:  

• Have been married by age 49

• Want to get married if they have not been

• Morally approve of interracial marriage

• Probably will have an extramarital affair in their lifetime

The first of the Ten Commandments I am going to examine is the prohibition against adultery.  While sociologist Andrew Cherlin projects that 85-90% of Americans will marry by the time they turn 49, marital infidelity is common.  The prevalence of infidelity among married heterosexuals covers quite a range in scientific studies.  Early sexologist Alfred Kinsey found that a third of men and a quarter of women reported having an affair on their spouse.  A meta-analysis of infidelity studies also finds a wide range of estimates, but these studies show 40-70% of married heterosexuals have an extramarital affair at some point in their lives.

In other words, adultery is common and possibly a behavior practiced at least once by the majority of married Americans.  Holy Moses indeed!

Gallup polling finds the majority -72%- of Americans polled in 2013 have been married.  Among those who have never married, 78% would like to marry someday.  One in four Americans, however, report to Gallup they have been divorced.

American attitudes towards sex in general and marriage continue to change.  From Gallup's polling on marriage, one can see big sea changes in Americans' attitudes:

Perhaps the biggest change -and longest tracked by Gallup- involves interracial marriage.  In 55 years the percentage of Americans approving of marriage between blacks and whites has jumped 83%.

Tune in tomorrow for more polling data!