A rarely applied, more than century-old statute that made cheating on your spouse a misdemeanor punishable by up to three months in jail was repealed in New York on Friday.
A bill repealing the 1907 Act, which has long been considered outdated and challenging to implement, was signed by Governor Kathy Hochul.
“It is somewhat ironic for me to sign a bill decriminalizing adultery, even though I have been fortunate enough to share a loving married life with my husband for 40 years,” the woman continued. “I know that people often have complex relationships.” These people, not our criminal justice system, should deal with these challenges. Let’s finally repeal this outdated and absurd law.
In certain places, adultery laws are actually legal. They were put in place to make it harder to get a divorce during a time when the only method to get a separation was to prove that your husband had cheated. Convictions have been more uncommon than charges. Some states have taken action to repeal their adultery laws in recent years.
Sexual contact with another individual while having a surviving spouse is considered adultery in New York. A few weeks after it was put into effect, a married man and a 25-year-old woman were arrested using the state’s statute for the first time, according to a New York Times report.
The bill’s sponsor, State Assemblymember Charles Lavine, said that since the 1970s, the statute has been used to accuse about a dozen people, but just five of those cases have resulted in convictions.
The purpose of laws is to prevent antisocial conduct and safeguard our community. Lavine stated in a statement on Friday that the adultery legislation in New York was ineffective.
The last time the state’s statute seems to have been applied was in 2010, when a woman was found engaging in sexual activity in a park; however, the adultery charge was eventually dropped as part of a plea deal.
When a state panel tasked with evaluating the penal code found the act almost impossible to implement in the 1960s, New York contemplated repealing it.
A 1965 story in the New York Times claims that after a politician contended that doing away with the rule would give the impression that the state was condoning adultery, lawmakers decided to keep it in place.
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