Illegal Adulter-ito

In this great “modern” world that we live in, some of our practices and laws are downright archaic. Take something as simple as adultery, the act of engaging in intercourse with a person that is not your legal spouse. Sounds bad, right? It’s nothing now. Adultery has surely been happening since before the concept of marriage. But try it in a marriage and shit hits the courtroom.

Outside of marriage, changing partners when you’re in a committed relationship is still considered cheating. But within marriage, a legally binding contract between two persons, cheating can be punishable in court. A slight majority of states consider adultery to be a civil matter, meaning it’s a problem between the adulterer and the injured spouse. The injured spouse can sue for damages such as emotional and financial distress, and loss of companionship. Adultery is an offense that is grounds for divorce and can affect divorce and child-custody proceedings.

However, in the slight minority of states where adultery is a criminal offense, things can get ugly. Making adultery into a criminal matter takes it from a solvable conflict between two parties to a punishable offense against humanity. Each state’s laws treat the offense differently. The punishment can range from a slight fine to life imprisonment, as a Michigan appellate court interpreted from that state’s adultery laws in 2007.

Yes, that’s right, a life sentence for cheating. I can understand suing, fines, and community service. But life imprisonment?! This simply goes too far. Too many of our laws date back to the founding of this country and the early settlers when things were seemingly different. In this case, I’ll name the Puritans as the scapegoat. The Puritans left England because they disagreed with how the religious state was run. Upon reaching America, the Puritans founded their communities by their religion and beliefs in living a simple life devoted to the “one true God.” This inclusion of church and state’s structure and rigidity in community and faith have influenced many of the morality laws and faith bases of this country today.

While the influences of the Puritans helped to build a fledgling nation into the power it is now, there comes a time when we as a country realize that we aren't Puritans anymore. We are no longer fleeing an oppressive rule. Instead, we are a nation of many: many people, many beliefs. It’s time that we accept that morality laws are not one-size-fits-all. It’s about time “when our nation can finally move beyond laws that require citizens to comply with the moral dictates of their neighbors.”

As always, there are people who want to make the laws stronger in respect to adultery and other issues related to marriage and sex, like the Minnesota Family Council who want to strengthen the state’s laws criminalizing a married woman’s adultery and a single woman’s consensual sex. We must not allow this religious persecution through the legal system. We can no longer flee that with which we disagree. We must stand up and fight against oppression. Marriage is at base a civil matter and therefore any issues between the two persons should be handled in a civil court. By criminalizing marital issues under morality codes, we are allowing the government to favor religious beliefs over secular justice, a clear violation of the First Amendment. Therefore, and laws making adultery, and non-marital sex, a criminal offense are unconstitutional and should be abolished.

Sources/Further Reading:

Adultery, in many states, is still a crime

The Puritan Movement: Influences on American History

Life sentence for adultery? Could be / Furor in Michigan when appeals judge says that's exactly what state law means

First Amendment to the United States Constitution

Map: Is Adultery Illegal?

The Free Dictionary: Adultery

In 2014, N.H. lawmakers will debate whether adultery should remain a crime

Sabbatical

Hello readers,

As you've noticed, I haven't posted on here lately. I am going through some personal matters and I've lost my motivation to write for this blog. I'm thankful to have had so much inspiration over this past year. I feel this has been some of my best writing. But times change and I may need a longer break from writing than I've already taken.

So be good my friends. Keep reading and pondering of random things!

Megan

Changes

No matter where you go, you are what you are player

And you can try to change but that's just the top layer

Man, you was who you was 'fore you got here

Only God can judge me, so I'm gone

Either love me, or leave me alone

~Jay-Z, Public Service Announcement

Change is quite possibly the most difficult and scariest thing a person can do. It is also the easiest thing, especially when done subconsciously. People change everyday and throughout their lifetimes. Some set out deliberately to change, others look back after the years have gone by to see the small changes they have made. Change needs a catalyst, a trigger. That trigger could be anywhere from a death to a break up to a failed class to a move across country or even just across town. What holds us back from change? What makes us more open to change?

I personally have changed so much over the course of my 28 years. As I child, I was messy, needy, and prone to temper-tantrums when I didn't get my way. Okay, so I haven't changed that much...! I was always quiet, but I really blossomed in high school when I found fellow crazy-odd people who understood what it meant to be crazy-odd. I changed myself from the painfully shy tween to an all out social butterfly, flitting from group to group. I still didn't clean my room and I'd get amazingly upset if I broke something, like a dish or a drinking glass. In college, I started as that painfully shy kid but again quickly blossomed as I met others who were as crazy as I am. In my early years, I was still that messy kid who had stuff all over the place even though the roommate said nothing and I wore my jeans for a month without washing them but would sit on my unmade bed.

I'd say my first major transformation started in my third year at college. My catalyst: Hurricane Katrina and a slob of a boyfriend. Katrina struck at the beginning of the school year and suddenly I was inundated with family and belongings from home that were salvaged. I had to put the belongings somewhere in my apartment, which required it to stay clean. My boyfriend came from a messy family. I'd never seen so much backed up laundry in my life. Unfortunately, he came from a situation where his mother did all the housework like cooking and cleaning while catering to her idle husband and children, all after working a 12 hour day. So when Stephen got his own apartment, he no longer had his mom to clean up after him, so he didn't clean up after himself. The smell of week old sweaty laundry is disgusting. The smell of week old sweaty male is also disgusting. If I wanted to spend time in that apartment, I had to clean up or else I would puke. This led me to keeping my own apartment and person clean so that I would never be like that.

My second major transformation was more of a snowball effect with several catalysts: living with my Granny, moving out and living with my boyfriend and his son, then moving in with my parents not long before my Granny died. Living with my Granny was great, in retrospect. She was a bit pushy and always had some tidbit of advice about cleaning or life or whatever. I filed them away, ignored, like any grand kid would do. It broke her heart when I moved out against her advice. In fact, it still hurts knowing how I did that to her. But I did it anyways and moved into a household where suddenly if I wanted it done, I had to do it myself. I started using all of the tips that Granny shared with me. I began to understand that while cleanliness may not be godliness, it certainly is much healthier for you. By the time I moved out of that house, I was a full-blown neat-freak. At my parents' house, especially after Granny passed two months later, I was obsessed with cleaning my "suite." At work, I became known for my precision in completing tasks. Let me tell ya, a gift wrap clerk is the best job for a neat-freak.

Unfortunately, it was around this time that my changes began to get in the way of my life. I pushed away people that I cared about because I was so much more concerned about being clean and in control of my surroundings. But at the same time, I've been consistently told not to change who I am. That's rather contradictory, no yes? How can I stay the same when the person I am is not sustainable in a meaningful relationship? I was told very bluntly that if I don't change, I should expect to spend the rest of my life alone. I can't even tell you how much that hurt then and still hurts now. But he's right. And so I've found the catalyst for my latest transformation. Changing deliberately is amazingly hard! I'm having to go against everything my brain has been wired to do for the past however many years. My changes run the gamut from not freaking out over my mother putting seasonings between the pizza and the pan to driving more aggressively (which is actually super fun). I've even started a blog to follow my journey. But all of my changes are really minor and only on the surface, see the Jay-Z quote above. The real meat of the matter is how I interact and react to other people. Which is really hard to do when I don't have an other person to practice with! I have to learn that what I think is best for someone is not necessarily what they would consider best for themselves and that it's not the end of the world. I've been trying to work on this for quite some time now. Obviously I haven't succeeded, but I've had some success. As Macklemore says: "We press play, don't press pause/Progress, march on."

Some people say you can't change who you are. I saw we are changing who we are all the time, slowly or quickly, consciously or subconsciously. At some level you have to accept whatever changes you make; they are not forced on you. It's up to you to decide if, how, why, for whom, you should and want to change. Me, I'm changing for love.