MI: cheat on your wife, get life
The randy crowd in the Michigan Legislature may have screwed themselves, by passing a law describing it as first-degree sexual misconduct when "sexual penetration occurs under circumstances involving the commission of any other felony." The case at issue involved some poor shlub giving a waitress Oxycontin in exchange for sex. But the judges of the Court of Appeals pointed out that since adultery is a felony in Michigan (even though there hasn't been a conviction since 1971), any adulterous intercourse is equivalent to rape, something which doubtless delights the University of Michigan's legal genius Catharine MacKinnon, but which criminalizes all kinds of relatively decent people, like the Michigan Attorney General.
Personally, I think the Court of Appeals is full of it. Section 29 of the Michigan Penal Code defines adultery as "the sexual intercourse of 2 persons, either of whom is married to a third person." I suppose, in a counter-Clintonian sense, that one could have sexual intercourse that did not involve sexual penetration. But that's certainly not how the average person understands the language. So, if penetration is one of the defining elements of adultery, then adultery could not be construed as "any other felony", because it would be the same act.
While I love it when a legislature gets caught writing bad law, locking up cheating spouses and throwing away the key is a bit excessive. Amazingly, the fundy-heavy readership of World Net Daily agrees with me.
Comments
Posted by: Jim Quick
Posted on: January 16, 2007 07:39 PM
The hollaballu is unwarented, The law has been on the books for years and no one has been prosecuted. Your take is correct. The rumor here is that the Apeals Court wanted to tweak the Atorney General a bit as he has admitted adultry. What legislator ever reads the laws he votes for. The answer is to stop using legaleze and instead write laws so there is no doubt of the meaning.