Michigan: Adultery= First-Degree Criminal Sexual Conduct

My personal opinion is that adultery is between the couple and the 3rd person. It should have no dealings with the court except when they get a divorce. But isn't Michigan known for harsh punishments?

unless it is brought up in divorce court settlements, just leave it well alone!

I don't agree with that. What you do between you and another consenting adult is your own business. Even if that's cheating on your spouse, it should only between the 3 of you, not the courts.

I don't agree with cheating at all for any reason. I do think though that maybe something like this would deter people. Thought probably not because people still commit murders and rape even though it's illegal.

It looks like the legal beagles are bound by some wording which did not foresee the most likely application in our day and age. (think kidnapping, having someone put a Mickey Finn in someone's drink to make them pass out).

There are a LOT of laws like that on the books in most states. You don't realize it until something like this comes up.

Last I checked AZ still had a law that unmarried people couldnt have sex and married ones arent doing it outside the bedroom...

We have all sorts of silly laws here in Michigan. It's illegal to have sex in a car, umm...I think there's one involving not allowing an alligator to be tied outside of a business.

A lot of these laws, including this one the OP mentioned, were all written a long long time ago. But not in a galaxy far away. In 1931, sure it was considered blasphemy to have an affair. Today, it's almost common and not as important as it was back then (and don't take me the wrong way, its still is WRONG to cheat, but back then it was considered a sin that would put you in hell).

Half of the harsh laws though don't hold up. I think the harshest that in the news right now is that you can only be on welfare for up to 4 years...unless you live in a city where the uemployment is over 9% or some number.

Sad, you can get life in prison for commiting adultry, but get probation for KILLING a child. Only in America.

When did our justice system become so screwed up and how long are we going to permit child killers to get probation?

Then people wonder why their are vigilante's. My word, I might become one to if my child's killer was sentenced to probation.

I am so tired of the government trying to go into my bedroom and tell me what I can and can't do.

Lest anyone forget, there are plenty of couples out there who are well aware of and also perfectly okay with their spouse "committing" adultery. Even though most of us think it's wrong, that is a moral judgement, not a legal one.

I doubt anyone will ever be prosecuted under that law for simple adultery. The article sounds like it's a law thats already on the books, and has been reinterpreted sort of tangentially to something else.

Maybe the issue should get some ground in the civil courts, but the criminal I am surprised that the prosecution didn't go after the cocktail waitress for selling her sexual favors for illegal drugs - that is as much prostitution as the man trading her the pills for sex is sexual misconduct. No third party, at that point, was injured...I just hope that there isn't an innocent significant other being harmed by all this, from the humiliation of publicity to suffering painful medical procedures from contracting a bad case of genital herpes, or AIDS, or...

This coming from a State that allows for First Cousins to get Married!!!
I'm sooooooooo thankful I moved from there.

Heyyyyy, I married my first cousin.















Just kidding

My reaction. Actually a twinge of panic... then... no WAY... and then I scrolled down.

Well played.

Shew, I thought I'd done messed up
(There are alot of people who don't find anything wrong with that.)

Wow I've lived here most my life and never heard that one.
Actually that would explain a lot.....

Ummm...no B and I are not first cousins...we're second. J/K

After being with a husband who was an abuser and cheater. To make a long story short this man was cheating with another married woman. He put a .45 caliber semi automatic to my head and the cats and I left with very little personal items. He moved this woman into my home before my sheets were cold. He cleared my savings account money, which was my grand mothers inheritance to me, and I literally had nothing. I had to stay at a friends house for 8 months and slept on the floor. The cats were enclosed in that bedroom for 8 months till I got my feet back on the ground. My exhusband and his girlfriend took everything I owned from before I was married to him. My friend helped me with lawyers fees in which I still owe her money. I lost everything to him and her, and the judge in denver colorado had his head straight up his ***

Yes, I feel I was done real wrong by the whole thing and it was criminal.

The happy ending to the story is the cats and I moved to nebraska and 4 years later I am very happily married to a wonderful man. We live in a nice home and life is wonderful. She in the end did me a favor. But I do often wonder if the stress from this whole ordeal brought on my soul cats disease that took hold 1 year later and he died.

My exhusband wound up defaulting on all of his credit cards and is in debt up to his eyeballs. He wound up marrying this woman after her divorce was final. They were married within the year of both divorces. Two cheaters....

Her karma is him............................

I pray for the laws of the universe to catch up to those two low lifes.

I like the thinking: stop people from being unfaithful, but I don't like the who life in prison for it. I think they should focus on the wife beater and the people who beat their children before we worry about those who cheat.

well I think that is very silly. Cheating is a private matter, but if it involves other things as of Abby's outlined situation then I think it should be taken seriously in court.

For example, this law isn't specific enough to constitute what cheating is defined by law.

Robbing your exwife and holding her gunpoint for your mistress. Well that's just wrong beyond any doubt (and I agree Abby, I hope the law catches up with both of them).

However if you consider hand holding or checking out another woman/man as cheating this law would cover that. IMO that would be ridiculous.

I lived there until 1993.I didn't know about the Law until 2004 when I went back for a visit and was told about it.Because I was joking about how hot one of my first cousins is.Mind you, I AM happily married.And I was told, we could get married.
Ewwwwwww yuck---no thanks!!!
Here in the south, it is NOT uncomon for second/third cousins to marry.

The small towns around where I live, it's not uncommon to marry your first cousin.... My Dh's best friend married his first cousin, but then again this family has generations of intermarriage within their own family, so it's not weird.

There was something on CBC radio recently similar to this - about old laws still being on books. Apparently it would cost the government many tax dollars and a lot of time to read through all the rulings and laws (new and old) - more than it is worth so they choose to just ignore them for the most part.

Cheating isn't well defined, but adultery is. Adultery is the legal wording, and what this law is about, and must by definition include penetrative sex, as it says in the article.

I agree though, that the nightmare of being held at gunpoint and robbed constitutes a whole lot more than adultery... That's a horrible experience, and two horrible people, and the law would have plenty of ways of dealing with them without the affair ever coming into it at all.

There are tons of sex things that are illegal in Ohio, and if you're under 18 you'll still get ticketed for them if you give the cops a chance. Oral sex is also illegal in lots and lots of states, even if you're a straight married couple (some laws also specify things that are illegal if you're single, or gay, etc).

I'll agree with that. Thank you for defining the 2.

I think a lot of people will interchange the words like I did now that this is out though and there will be an uproar of "arrests" or really trials for che...AHHH!! There I go again ADULTERY.