There are severe, benign, unjust, absurd or pagan laws. There are laws that fall under their own weight, outdated according to the times.
Within this world of criminal regulations, New York still has one of the most sterile regulations that exist. No matter how much it is punished, that even divine justice threatens with the cauldrons of hell, nothing prevents the existence of adultery or simply falling in love with someone other than the husband or wife. You could say that it is part of the human condition.
In other words, in such a supposedly progressive place, cheating on your partner is still a criminal offence. Adulterers, although they are the most persecuted in the whole world, are not only sinners, but also criminals.
But after 120 years in force, everything is ready to put an end to what most consider an anachronism.
The state legislative assembly voted almost unanimously on the proposal to repeal the adultery law. A committee of the Senate gave the go-ahead and it is planned that the vote will take place in this other chamber at any time this week, without it being noted that there is significant opposition. So the moment is approaching when Governor Kathy Hochul will sign what will be the new law, historic of course.
“No law that criminalizes consensual intimate conduct between adults deserves to appear in the criminal code,” declared Democrat Charles Lavine, promoter of the update, to The New York Times.
For Lavine, who describes himself as happily married for 54 years, the issue is no joke. “It does not serve as a deterrent. It’s just a celebration of someone’s concept of their own morality,” he added to Politico.
The law still in force in New York declares guilty of adultery the one who has sexual relations with another person when his spouse is living or that other person has a spouse. It is classified as a misdemeanor, a circumstance that, according to Lavine, makes it more onerous to the extent that it is not judged by a jury, but depends on the determination of a magistrate. The penalty can be up to three months in jail and a $500 fine.
While it’s still in place in a handful of states—Oklahoma, Michigan, and Wisconsin make adultery a felony, although there’s no evidence they’ve used it recently—most of the U.S. rejected the rule or they never thought to apply it.
The closest case to New York occurred in 2010. A 43-year-old married woman was arrested after she was discovered having relations with a man who was not her husband in a public park in Batavia. Both were charged with lewd behavior. However, only she, Suzanne Corona, was accused of adultery. There was a lot of media uproar and his police photo was published in the press around the world. He couldn’t go anywhere without hearing the murmurs that arose in his path.
If Corona closes the list – there have not been more than a dozen New Yorkers charged during the last half century -, the course of the law began in 1907, motivated, apparently, by the attempt to reduce the number of divorces when adultery was the only path to legal separation. That is why sex outside marriage began to be criminalized.
Ten days after it took effect, railroad entrepreneur Patrick H. Hirsch, who was 40, entered the list as the first person arrested. He had left his wife Elizabeth in Chicago, taken their common son with him, and settled in New York with his mistress, Ruby Yeargin, a 25-year-old clerk. The woman, offended, hired a detective, who revealed the whereabouts of the lovers in Manhattan, before going to the police.
Time has passed and the way we see marriage has changed. The adultery law lost its raison d’être when New York, in 2010, was the last state to adopt no-fault divorce. Couples can separate without proof of infidelity, cruelty, kidnapping or abandonment. It had been 40 years since California had established it.
