Adultery is set to become legal in the state of New York with politicians poised to scrap the crime of infidelity among married people, The Telegraph reports.
New York is one of 16 states where marital cheating is still a criminal offence. Adultery is still classed as a felony in Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Adultery bans are still on the books in several states across the U.S., though charges are also rare and convictions even rarer. They were traditionally enacted to reduce the number of divorces at a time when a cheating spouse was the only way to secure a legal split.
Only about a dozen people have been charged under New York’s law since 1972, and of those, just five cases have netted convictions, according to Assemblyman Charles Lavine, who sponsored the bill to repeal the ban.
The last adultery charge in New York according to Telegraph appears to have been filed in 2010 against a woman who was caught engaging in a sex act in a public park, but it was later dropped as part of a plea deal.
Lavine says it’s time to throw out the law given that it’s never enforced and because prosecutors shouldn’t be digging into what willing adults do behind closed doors.
“It just makes no sense whatsoever and we’ve come a long way since intimate relationships between consenting adults are considered immoral,” Lavine said. “It’s a joke. This law was someone’s expression of moral outrage,” said Lavine.
New York’s bill to repeal its ban has already passed the Assembly and is expected to soon pass the Senate before it can move to the governor’s office for a signature.