Slamming a New York State Penal Law that makes adultery a class B misdemeanor as “archaic,” Democratic State Assemblymember Charles D. Lavine introduced a new bill Monday to decriminalize a sin that was punishable by death in the Old Testament of the Bible.
In his bill, A.4714, which was approved in the full chamber by a vote of 137-10, Lavine seeks to repeal and decriminalize adultery which has been a crime in New York since 1907. Though it has been rarely enforced, adultery in the state can be punished with a penalty of up to three months imprisonment and a fine of up to $500.
“This outdated statute criminalizes sexual behavior between consenting adults,” Lavine said in a release Monday. “It is long past time for us to remove it from the penal code. If a law is not enforced, there is no reason it should be maintained.”
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According to Lavine, since 1972, only 13 people have been charged with adultery. And of those charged, only five were convicted.
“In virtually every one of those cases, there was some other crime involved, and the prosecuting attorney added adultery as just one of many crimes committed,” the released said.
As recently as Dec. 1, 2023, adultery was still listed as a crime in 17 states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Some 14 of them, including New York and Puerto Rico, criminalize adultery as a misdemeanor but in Oklahoma, Michigan and Wisconsin, it is a felony.
In a 1907 letter to the editor published in The New York Times just days before the adultery law went into effect, divorce attorney S.N. Tuckman argued against criminalizing adultery which, at the time, was the only grounds on which a divorce could be granted.
He suggested a better way to serve the public would have been to amend divorce laws.
“The new statute declares the very ground for a divorce a criminal act. It is intended to put a stop to collusive divorces. The court calendar in New York and Kings Counties is overcrowded with uncontested divorce cases; many of them are instituted where either the husband or the wife has furnished the other with the necessary evidence of adultery and an agreement has been made between the parties that the alleged offender should not contest the charge,” Tuckman wrote. “In these cases, the court on detecting such collusion, could merely refuse a divorce; at present the court may direct a criminal proceeding to be instituted against the alleged offender.”
In 2008, well-known Manhattan divorce attorney Raoul L. Felder, whose clients have included former NYC Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, told the Times how many of them have demanded that their cheating spouses be criminally prosecuted.
He noted that he usually tells them from his high-rise midtown office that: “You’re right. It is a class B misdemeanor. Come over here behind my desk. Look across the street. Right now, the criminals are hard at work.”
Felder further argued that a criminal ban on adultery has no practical significance.
“It’s a celebration of hypocrisy, with a nod of the head to religion over reality,” he said. “Adultery is the last symptom of the disease. It’s not the disease.”
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