presently there is no legal culpability for committing adultery in our 'western' world.

the criminal code of “civilised” countries does allow for legal, monetary, or other compensation for physical or “visible damage”. this extends to take into account “emotional” consequences for a limited number of “approved” pre-existing circumstances (ie: 'victims’ of crime compensation act'; which makes certain allowances for a victims’ mental distress).

in the eyes of the law, an individual is not culpable for any emotional damage they cause, intentional or otherwise, provided they did not break any actual “law”. an action only becomes illegal when it is legislated against and a law is passed either banning or in some other way limiting it’s application to certain circumstances.

so what might happen to the world if our moral ‘code’ became law ?. what if we were bound by legal requirement to behave in a morally ‘correct’ way ?. it has been suggested that the base of a healthy society is the family unit. were adultery to be illegal, chances are it would become paradoxically at once more attractive but less widespread.

if it became a crime to have sex outside of your marriage, or with a person you know to be married regardless of your marital status, doubtless the civil libertarians would cry foul, yet mans’ insistence at exercising his every ‘right’ regardless of the damage to society will ultimately liberate nobody.

fewer ‘affairs’ would lower divorce rates, both by forcing those who view marriage as a ‘non-serious’ commitment to think again before marrying, and by preserving the marriages we already have. fewer unwanted pregnancies would occur, and in the longer term, juvenile crime as a result of broken homes would also decrease.

if facing a criminal charge, single people may think twice before they become sexually involved with somebody who is married. (and the possibility of being charged with ‘adultery’ on your permanent record can’t be very enticing either).

as long as we break no ‘official’ laws, we are free to do whatever we like to each other regardless of the consequences. should i desire, i may seduce a married man, entice him away from his family, break the hearts of his children and shatter the life of their mother.

i may watch young people grow up fatherless, rob the childrens’ grandparents of their presence in their lives, and wreak financial ruin on a man who has built a home and family. i may do all of that with complete freedom, as i’d only be morally wrong at the moment. however, should i do nothing to that same married man but bump his car at a traffic-light, i have committed a crime.

(making it illegal to devastate a family on purpose may even mean we have to jettison some of the other silly laws we have to make room for it. the way we are going, soon people will be able to sue you for clearing your throat after 10pm. but you can still go ahead a trash a bunch of lives, that’s cool).

although ‘adultery as a crime’ could never happen in this modern world, will the taste we have developed for being able to do ‘whatever we like’ unhindered ultimately be our undoing ?.

because sometimes things may not cost money, but everything we do eventually gets paid for somehow.