Light up a joint on any New York street and no cop will stop you. Enjoy your alcohol, and as long as you don’t get behind the wheel of a vehicle, or cause a disturbance, you’re good. Drugs and alcohol are legal in New York State. But get into bed with your next-door neighbor– if they’re not your “legal spouse” — and you risk going to jail for three months or placed on probation for a year.
Does it sound crazy? Well, it’s a little-known fact that adultery is still technically considered a crime under Penal Law 255.17, which defines adultery as engaging in sexual intercourse with someone other than one’s spouse.
This law is about to become obsolete not only in practice, but also de facto. The state Legislature is currently considering a bill that would decriminalize adultery, reflecting the changing times and attitudes towards marriage and infidelity. Introduced by Democratic Assemblyman from Long Island, Charles Lavine, the bill has already been approved by the state Assembly and is awaiting passage in the state Senate.
Obviously, the law criminalizing adultery is rarely enforced but surprisingly, at least five people have been convicted of it since the 1970s, most recently in 2010 when Suzanne Corona, a married woman living in Batavia, was charged with adultery after being arrested for having sex with another man on a playground. Almost certainly if Suzanne and her friend had kept their adultery in the bedroom instead of on the playground they would not have been arrested. As it turned out, she later pleaded guilty to public lewdness after prosecutors dropped the more serious adultery charge. Since 1972, only 13 people have been charged with adultery, and of those, only five were convicted.
To say that the law on adultery is obsolete is a serious understatement. At a time when marriage itself is seen as outdated, it’s unfathomable that law enforcement would poke their noses into the exclusivity of a personal relationship. According to statistics, almost 90% of the world’s population now live in countries with falling marriage rates. In the U.S., marriage has declined by 60% since the 1970s. In fact, a larger share of adults have cohabited than have been married. Among adults ages 18 to 44, 59% have lived with an unmarried partner at some point in their lives, while 50% have ever been married, according to Pew Research Center analysis of the National Survey of Family Growth.
Lavine said in a statement Monday, “This outdated statute criminalizes sexual behavior between consenting adults. It is long past time for us to remove it from the penal code. If a law is not enforced, there is no reason it should be maintained.”
With statistics on marriage and cohabitation being what they are, rescinding the law on adultery is almost a moot point, but certainly, it’s overdue.
