Why is adultery illegal but homosexuality isn't?

Answer 1

Adultery exists when a spouse enters into an intimate, sexual relationship with another person. Sanctions against adultery date back to the Old Testament when a man needed to protect his property rights from a wife bearing an extramarital child. In the United States they are also the echoes of our country's Puritan beginnings when a strict Puritan moral code was, for a time, the law of the land prior to the birth of the United States of America. The criminal code has historically served as a moral guide to behavior.

Adultery is no longer considered a crime in most states in the U. S. Although it is still covered in the law codes of only about 21 states, those laws are no longer enforced in most cases. Most states are not motivated to enforce a marriage through law enforcement. Divorce is readily available to parties in a failed marriage. In most all Western countries, adultery is not a crime.

Sanctions against homosexuality are also a holdover from biblical times. However, much to the chagrin of religious conservatives, in 2003 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that sexual activity between consenting adults is legal, and the Texas "Homosexual Conduct" law was unconstitutional. That decision made private, homosexual relations between consenting adults legal in every state. State laws banning homosexual sodomy are unconstitutional.

It is interesting to note that the Court overturned its previous ruling on the same issue in the 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick, where it upheld a challenged Georgia statute and did not find a constitutional protection of sexual privacy. Public policy matured in the intervening seventeen years, the Court found it unrealistic to continue to infringe on the rights of homosexual citizens and institutionalized morality has taken its rightful place in the past.

On November 18, 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that same-sex couples have a right to marry. The case was decided on the basis of the state constitution. Chief Justice Margaret Marshall quoted Lawrence in its second paragraph: "Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code."

Homosexuality is illegal in 76 Countries.Adultery is only Illegal in some Muslim countries (about 14 countries).

But aside from that, Adultery is a choice, that usually has a victim, whereas homosexuality is a natural sexual orientation.

Answer 2

Homosexuality is illegal in 76 Countries.Adultery is only Illegal in some Muslim countries (about 14 countries).

But aside from that, Adultery is a choice, that usually has a victim, whereas homosexuality is a natural sexual orientation.