Should adultery carry legal penalties?

[If my soul was made of stone]

Even women are more likely to blame other women for their husbands infidelity (Cardiff Met had a study on this in the age of online affairs looking at Facebook messages).

Hence the enduring country music tradition of female artists establishing their bravado by promising to shake down anyone who fools around with their man:

Between this and "The Pill", the sociological perspectives of Loretta Lynn are quite fascinating. Of course, Parton's immortal "Jolene" is a beautiful subversion of the trope that displays a piercing vulnerability.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Again,

there plenty of ways to register intense social disapproval short of ostracizing people. This all-or-nothing attitude towards whether or not to treat an immoral behavior charitably is the cancer that's killing moral reasoning.

Fair enough  but I don't think the general attitude of society towards infidelity is "charitable ".

As well it shouldn't be. What I'm saying--and what I'm evidently going to have to keep saying until I get sick of this thread--is that there are mechanisms of sanction that society has for its members that fall far short of ostracism, and that can and should be used in a great many situations in which sterner measures can't or shouldn't be. When my great-aunt Anna "Gorg" Gorglione found out that her sisters were cheating on their husbands while they (the husbands) were away fighting World War II, she chewed them out over the dinner table a few times and got them sh**tty Christmas presents.

Women have both historically and to this day suffered disproportionately from legal and social charges of adultery. They often suffer blame even when they aren't the one who cheated. (Hillary Clinton et passim). Even women are more likely to blame other women for their husbands infidelity (Cardiff Met had a study on this in the age of online affairs looking at Facebook messages).

It's why I'm not a fan of airing even tacit dissaproval because we know it's effects and how it can be weaponised is disproportionate. And you can't balance it because the scales are too tipped towards misogynistic and patriarchal structures of power, roles and responsibilities.

Tldr; the real world implications disproportionately affect women. I think it's always worth pausing for thought.

I understand this point and I've considered it carefully over the years; I don't know if these sorts of inequities register as morally significant for Dule and dead0 or not, but they do for me and they do influence how I respond to these things in real situations. (A formerly-close friend of mine serially cheated on her now-ex-husband and then abruptly divorced him, and I stayed out of it because the husband was someone who gave me bad vibes for other reasons and seemed like he might be psychologically abusive or controlling.) I'm just not of the belief that we can or should entirely abdicate our responsibility to respond to immoral behavior because there are inequities in how those responses have been applied. The idea that we shouldn't even tacitly disapprove in these situations strikes me as the sexual equivalent of tiptoeing around criticizing banking practices because doing so has often been used as a front for antisemitism (and yes, I have met and talked to people who do just that). It also strikes me as defeatist, honestly, since the implication is that it's impossible to construct a socially enforceable, non-misogynistic morality of interpersonal relationships. The project of constructing just that is not one that I'm willing to give up on.

Even women are more likely to blame other women for their husbands infidelity (Cardiff Met had a study on this in the age of online affairs looking at Facebook messages).

Hence the enduring country music tradition of female artists establishing their bravado by promising to shake down anyone who fools around with their man:

Between this and "The Pill", the sociological perspectives of Loretta Lynn are quite fascinating. Of course, Parton's immortal "Jolene" is a beautiful subversion of the trope that displays a piercing vulnerability.

There's a cottage industry of lesbian erotica based on the Euripides play Medea where she avenges Jason's abandonment of her for Glauce by seducing Glauce before Glauce consummates her relationship with Jason. I haven't read much/any of it because I don't like reading erotica in general, but it's a guilty pleasure of a (female) classicist friend of mine.

[lfromnj]

No, but I'm not surprised that there are libertarians arguing for it. Libertarianism was never about fostering a truly free and open society, and always about setting up a system to permanently entrench the existing power structures under the guise of muh contracts.

I would suggest reading Rose Wilder Lane & Isabel Paterson - unlike Rand, they are much better proponents of libertarianism than their male counterparts. If that upsets your mind, take some MacIntyre as a antidote afterwards.

no, but it should carry far higher negatives from the friends, family and acquaintances of those that do it.  If you're willing to stand in front of your god, your friends and loved ones and lie to their faces, you're not someone who can be trusted with much of anything.

I would argue that it ought to be, alone, grounds for impeachment. Trusting someone to be loyal to the American people and Congress who is not loyal to their wife is not just immoral, it’s illogical.

Right now, by the way, the military can expel members for adultery - see Kelly Flinn. In civilian law, however, the only notable example recently is John Raymond Bushey, who got fined $100 in Virginia over it.

I don't think the military expels people for normal adultery, its only is if both of them are related to the military and usually only if it disrupts unit cohesion.

[dead0man]

Women have both historically and to this day suffered disproportionately from legal and social charges of adultery.

sure, but women do pretty good in family court, whether they were cheated on or did the cheating.  The only way a man ever gets custody is if the woman just doesn't want the kids or is in jail.  Child support and alimony rates are often ridiculous.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Women have both historically and to this day suffered disproportionately from legal and social charges of adultery.

sure, but women do pretty good in family court, whether they were cheated on or did the cheating.  The only way a man ever gets custody is if the woman just doesn't want the kids or is in jail.  Child support and alimony rates are often ridiculous.

True, American family court is very imbalanced towards the mother. That's one of the view aspects of MRA I agreed with.

[Cokeland Saxton]

No. The government should have no say in peoples' sex lives.

[Badger]

I'm curious to see if there's any meaningful support on Atlas for the "yes" answer. Call me crazy, but I can see the logic behind it from a libertarian perspective. If we view marriage as a contract, and adultery as a violation of that contract, then perhaps it could be argued that it is the government's duty to enforce that contract. Perhaps under such a system, marriage contracts could choose to either include or omit this kind of clause.

That is the worst form of "libertarian" theory.

Breach of contract does not carry legal penalties to speak of. Now, if you're talking about a civil breach of contract, well, adultery can lead to grounds and be a factor at least in resolution of a divorce settlement in Most states already.

[Badger]

no, but it should carry far higher negatives from the friends, family and acquaintances of those that do it.  If you're willing to stand in front of your god, your friends and loved ones and lie to their faces, you're not someone who can be trusted with much of anything.

This. There should be next to no social toleration of infidelity but it shouldn't carry penal consequences.

How do you feel about "polyamorous" people?

There is a legal theory of waiver of Rights.