2014
"I don't think there's any appetite in New Hampshire to use police powers to enforce a marriage," state Rep. Tim O'Flaherty, the bill's sponsor, said during a public hearing last month. States' anti-adultery laws are rarely enforced, a vestige of our country's Puritanical beginnings, says Naomi Cahn, a law professor at the George Washington University Law School. "I suspect it's not something most people having non-marital relationships are thinking about," Cahn tells USA TODAY Network.
The state Senate of New Hampshire has voted to repeal a law against adultery, USA Today reports. Under the law, adultery was considered a Class B misdemeanor and punishable by a $1,200 fine. Opponents of the law framed the issue as one of privacy and see its repeal as a victory for individual rights:
1641
Forasmuch, as Thomas Bray, of Yarmouth, a single person, and Anne, the wife of Francis Linceford, have committed the act of adultery and uncleanness, and have layne in one bed together in the absence of her husband, which hath beene confessed by both parties in the publike Court, the Courth doth censure them as followeth: That they be both severely whipt immediately at the public post, that they shall weare two letters, namely, an AD, for Adulterers, daily, upon the outside of their uppermost garment, in a most eminent place thereof, and if they shall be found at any tyme in any towne or place within the government without them so worne upon their uppermost garment as aforesaid, that then the constable of the town or place shall take them, or wither of them, omitting so to weare the said two letters, and shall forthwith whip them for their negligence.
In the Plymouth Colony, adultery was no joke. Adulterers could be punished with violence, shame, and, in the case of unfaithful women, threatened with divorce. The colony's court records tell the story of one couple (married woman, single man) who couldn't keep from each others' beds--and the punishment their government thrust upon them: