Overreacting to sex


Another state tries to impose morality by law
In Michigan, adultery can get you life in prison.

In a ruling sure to make philandering spouses squirm, Michigan's second-highest court says that anyone involved in an extramarital fling can be prosecuted for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in prison.

"We cannot help but question whether the Legislature actually intended the result we reach here today," Judge William Murphy wrote in November for a unanimous Court of Appeals panel, "but we are curtailed by the language of the statute from reaching any other conclusion."

"Technically," he added, "any time a person engages in sexual penetration in an adulterous relationship, he or she is guilty of CSC I," the most serious sexual assault charge in Michigan's criminal code.

No one expects prosecutors to declare open season on cheating spouses. The ruling is especially awkward for Attorney General Mike Cox, whose office triggered it by successfully appealing a lower court's decision to drop CSC charges against a Charlevoix defendant. In November 2005, Cox confessed to an adulterous relationship.

So if you aren't married and the person you are hopping in the sack with isn't married, it's OK?

That is the problem with these moral laws, there tend to be draconian consequences combined with a very slippery slope.

Personally I am against adultery only because it violates the promises someone made to their spouse. I can justify civil penalties, but I can't see making it a part of criminal law.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Tue - January 16, 2007 at 03:05 PM  Tag


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