Talk:Adultery

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Citation contradicts article: "Adultery often incurred severe punishment, usually for the woman and sometimes for the man"

This article needs the attention of someone with a knowledge of legal history. I've just looked through the reference for Footnote 2 "The doctrine and law of marriage, adultery, and divorce" at Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=mt0TAAAAIAAJ .

• In multiple cases the reference directly contradicts the article's claim that, "Adultery often incurred severe punishment, usually for the woman and sometimes for the man".

Possibly the error was the results in merely searching the book for the term "adulteress" and "adulterer" and counting the results. Searching on punishment give additional results.

1. https://books.google.ca/books?id=mt0TAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA485#v=onepage&q=punishment&f=false Capitol punishment for the adulterer (man), expulsion of the woman "adultress" from the house.

2. https://books.google.ca/books?id=mt0TAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA491#v=onepage&q=punishment&f=false In the Marian Islands the offense is not punishable in the woman; but if the man offends, the woman and her relations waste his lands and turn him out of the house.

3. https://books.google.ca/books?id=mt0TAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA492#v=onepage&q=punishment&f=false If the adultery be committed with a woman of inferior caste, and by force, the possessions of the adulterer are confiscated and the possessions of the adulterer are confiscated, his person mutilated, and he is carried round the city on an as : for adultery with a woman of inferior or equal caste, and by fraud, the adulterer forfeits his estates, is branded on the forehead, and banished from the kingdom. These laws of Shaster apply to the higher castes. If a man of low caste commit adultery with a woman of high caste, he is tied on a hot plate and burned to death; while adultery of the higher caste with lower castes may be compensated for a trifling fine. A Brahmin suffers only the loss of his hair : but the wife of a Brahmin is subject to severe discipline if the crime be committed with the higher castes; and if she offends with a lower caste she is punished by the loss of her hair, a nauseous unction, and a procession on an ass through the city, …

4. https://books.google.ca/books?id=mt0TAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA504#v=onepage&q=punishment&f=false every person, the man as well as the woman

There are more instances in the book. For example ancient Jewish law decrees that both the man and the woman be put do death. I didn't continue searching because of point B below.

What we can see so far is that the reference contradicts the claim in the article that generally only the woman was punished. Generally both were punished, generally with a similar level of punishment. And in cultures were the punishment was not at a similar level, it was more often the man who was put to death, with the woman having her head shorn, being put out of the house, etc.

B. Even though the reference was written by someone with an MA from Trinity College Oxford. The author was at Oxford University, so I *assume* he had a good grasp of English, Scots, and biblical law, despite being a church minister and chaplin, and having no academic or professional qualification in law or legal history.

But what of other laws from other countries and from non-biblical history? The book was written in 1826 in a folksy style, with phrasing that indicates it wasn't based on understandings and stories, rather than reading the texts of the foreign laws.

Shouldn't a reference to what past laws are or were in foreign cultures be required to be written after reading those laws of those various foreign cultures? I don't know the answer, I am not an expert. So I did not update the article. But I suspect an additional more authoritative source reference should be found. Ideally an expert in legal history should provide aid.

Perhaps the current source reference could be left in place to indicate that generally both men and women were punished, but that sometimes the man was punished more severely. 2604:3D09:A87F:FD10:D133:49D6:4AC6:937D (talk) 07:26, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

(I've edited the foregoing to removed all the line breaks, making it MUCH easier to read.}

FWIW, I don't see anything that "contradicts the article" (and as noted above, I am NOT a fan of this article). If you were to become familiar with a few Wikipedia articles at random, you might note that they generally present differing opinions.

Sociologically, it's settled fact that males are generally much less enthusiastically punished for adulterous acts than are females in similar circumstances. This may vary somewhat, due to the social status or caste membership of those involved, but nevertheless holds.

What is "on the books" (whether legal or religious) really doesn't matter much. Even if the standard punishments are identical, a male often receives only token punishment (usually defended with some fiction such as that besmirching his ego or social standing is worse than being whipped) while a female is imprisoned or beaten or executed.

Too, there is the differential problem of traditional economic dependence by females. A male who is divorced by decree and run out of town can move along, find a job elsewhere, and reestablish. A divorced woman is treated as subhuman: having been sold to her husband by her family, she no longer has support either from her household or from blood kin, and may not even be allowed to work much less to receive a living wage.

You hint broadly that one of the sources is an MA candidate from Oxford. Really, these were obtained from a book written by an Episcopalian minister and published in 1826, so hardly the pinnacle of objective and thoroughgoing historical research.

I suppose if the article were to claim that adulterous men are ALWAYS punished less viciously than adulterous females, you might have a point. But in the end presenting a few variant opinions does little to push back against statements of "often" or "mostly."

It's great that you've found a source that supports your prejudice (indicated by "What we can see so far"), and therefore it maybe ought to be included by some registered editor or something, but it certainly doesn't overturn the article.
Weeb Dingle (talk) 15:29, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Adultery law in California

There is currently no information on the law in California apart from there being no adultery law there as of 1996. There is the potential for curiosity over the law in that state considering the 1963 novel The Graduate by Charles Webb, adapted into a film in 1967, is set in California and contains a well known example of adultery in popular culture and a threat to prosecute the unmarried partner. In December 2014 User:John Paul Parks added a note in the article about the film saying "In 1967, the year in which the film was made, adultery was a criminal offense in California. See Cal. Penal Code §§ 269a, 269b (repealed 1975)". The note has since been removed and I cannot imagine any such reference appearing in that article soon considering trivia sections are discouraged on Wikipedia. Such a reference might be better mentioned in this article considering it is about a real life adultery law. I have so far not been able to find any reference to a former adultery law in California but most web sources I found claims that the state has no adultery law as it has no-fault divorce which was introduced there in 1970. Tk420 (talk) 20:56, 9 September 2019 (UTC)-edited

Adultery US law map needs updating

Utah decriminalized adultery in 2019, as it states in the article. It would be nice if someone could update the map. Galaxy1011 (talk) 08:00, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

"Double standard"

Several parts of this article refer to a "double standard" between male and female adultery as though this is some heinous bigotry; I note here that the ENWP article for double standard itself begins: "A double standard is the application of different sets of principles for situations that are, in principle, the same."

The unfortunate fact of the matter is that male and female adultery are not identical in consequences, due to mater semper certa est. A husband who is unfaithful to his wife cannot trick his wife into thinking any resulting children are her own; a wife who is unfaithful to her husband can. Given the enormous time and material investment associated with parenting, which most wish to reserve for their own children, this creates a fundamental asymmetry in the crime (one that has partially been rectified in the modern day via paternity testing, true, but that is not retroactive), and thus an asymmetry in the punishment is not unjust.

There is currently no connection drawn between the sex-specific nature of uncertainty of paternity and the asymmetry in punishment, which I think overly dismisses ancient customs. Magic9mushroom (talk) 08:41, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

If anything, the act of a married man having sex with an unmarried woman (the act less likely to be punished historically) was one of the most socially harmful acts, because it led to illegitimate children, which historically in most cultures suffered a dire fate of ostracism and discrimination, and this also led to social problems such as poverty and criminality. By contrast, a married woman bringing into the family a child fathered by a man other than her husband did not lead to such problems as such children were born into the legally protected state of marriage. As for "the enormous time and material investment associated with parenting" that you refer to, this is a modern view, as historically it was 'quantity' favored over 'quality' (large families with very high child mortality rates), and children were seen as an asset to the family due to their involvement in child labour. And, with regard to adultery, STIs were a major concern too, especially as historically there weren't modern treatments for them, so wives of unfaithful husbands could be put at serious risk due to their husbands' infidelity. Now, you may argue that it was emotionally traumatizing for a man to raise a child potentially not biologically his, but personal emotional hardship was not that high on the agenda historically, and if you take emotions into account, there is no reason why women's emotional suffering in case of their husbands' infidelity should not be taken into account. The reason why the article implies that the practice was 'bigoted' is because modern sources assess it like that, in that, the main reason for the double standard was related to the low status that women occupied in those societies, especially the extreme legal and social inequality between husband and wife.2A02:2F0F:B0FF:FFFF:0:0:6463:D6FB (talk) 01:08, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

"led to illegitimate children, which historically in most cultures suffered a dire fate of ostracism and discrimination" Not necessarily for various royal bastards or papal bastards who were elevated to the nobility, such as Charles FitzRoy, 2nd Duke of Cleveland or Cesare Borgia. Bastards of wealthy merchants (such as Sarah Bernhardt) and wealthy lawyers (such as Leonardo da Vinci) were also taken care off by their fathers or extended families. Dimadick (talk) 04:49, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

If a child was born out of the relation of a married man and an unmarried woman, such child did not have any automatic protection like a child born into marriage, and the situation of such child was, in most cases, dire. If the father acknowledged the child (which rarely happened) the situation of the child would improve, but in most cases the child would still suffer legal and social disadvantage. 2A02:2F0F:B0FF:FFFF:0:0:6463:D6FB (talk) 06:15, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Section "Biblical sources"

New text was added in the section "Biblical sources" by Al-Andalus, but absolutely no sources were cited. It reads like an essay presenting the personal thoughts of the author, rather than an encyclopedic analysis of the religious doctrine; and the tone is also unencyclopedic. Given that the section deals with the bible, it has to cite text from the bible and add scholarly interpretations from reliable sources for that text in order to explain the biblical concept of adultery; otherwise it's simply WP:OR and violates WP:V. I suggest the new text be cut until the problem is fixed. 2A02:2F0F:B1FF:FFFF:0:0:6463:DD53 (talk) 18:09, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Although I have edited many of the sections of text referred to to make them read more accurately in English, I agree about their removal until they are replaced with properly referenced material.

Current lede

The current lede (recently changed) reads:"Adultery (from Latin adulterium; ad- +‎ alterō, “I change/alter [one lineage for another”]) is extra-marital sex partaken by a spouse, or premarital sex partaken by a betrothed person, that is considered objectionable on social, religious, moral, or legal grounds."

The paragraph is unsourced. Although the definitions of adultery vary, it is not commonly understood to include premarital sex, except in Islam (where it includes all premarital sex, regardless of the existence or not of betrothal). (John Calvin had a similar interpretation, but this is not mainstream in Christianity).

Please see the dictionary definitions of adultery.[1] [2] [3] [4]. Also note that the lede should focus on the current understanding of the concept of adultery, rather than on historical ones.

As for etymology, the (Latin) etymology of the word is: "adultery is from adulterāre (“to pollute, defile, commit adultery”), a word formed ultimately from the Latin elements ad- “to, near” and alter “other.”).[5].2A02:2F0F:B205:E200:5459:82A1:28DF:5830 (talk) 15:06, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Meaning: betrothed to someone else. You see, in the Bible there was no betrothal. Ancient Jews did not have betrothals. They had two ceremonies: marriage and consummation of marriage. That's why St. Joseph was Virgin Mary's husband. tgeorgescu (talk) 15:31, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

The current lede implies that adultery includes infidelity where neither party is legally married. Not only that adultery is not usually understood to include this today, but even in a historical context, the concept of adultery often required the existence of a lawful, valid marriage. For example, sexual intercourse between an unmarried girl/woman, who was in an arrangement where a future marriage was to be expected (ie. betrothal, engagement, promised into marriage etc) but where such marriage had not yet taken place, and a man other than the one she was supposed to marry, was not usually adultery (obviously it varied by culture). This does not mean that such behavior was not punishable, but often it was punished differently (less severally) than adultery. The very concept of adultery often relied on the proof that a valid marriage had been contacted. (And most contemporary definitions of adultery are sex between a married person and a person other than their spouse).2A02:2F0F:B205:E200:104B:E29F:EA3A:E762 (talk) 17:13, 18 June 2023 (UTC)