From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Jun 18 2003 - 06:43:39 BST
Hi Rick,
>JOHNNY
> > Oh, I'm sorry. But it's not like we're discussing philosophy or art or
> > politics. It is close to adultery. It could lead to adultery. How's
>that?
>
>RICK
>Okay, if it makes you feel better (though I think you're putting way too
>much emphasis on semantics).
You're just saying that to aggravate me, aren't you :)
>JOHNNY
> > Adultery is the flip side of marriage law. A marriage license is a
> > license issued by the state for a man and a woman to have intercourse,
>to
> > have children together. If you don't have a license, it is illegal. So
>I
> > don't see any room for creativity there.
>
>RICK
>Umm, Johnny.... You don't need a marriage license to have intercourse, have
>children or even to get married (marriage licenses are 'advisory', not
>mandatory). Moreover, I think there's room for creativity everywhere.
Adultery and fornication are still crimes in beloved Massachusetts.
Adultery is defined as sexual intercourse, which has a scientific definition
that spans species. Fornication is left undefined. As you probably know,
marriage is also left undefined in our laws. (but there's enough hints that
show that it actually is defined by gender. The laws list the relations
that a man can not marry, and they list the relations that a woman can not
marry. All the people listed are of the opposite gender, and there is
actually one difference in the list: a man can marry his son's wife, but a
woman cannot marry her daughter's husband. (Obviously, they can't still be
married, that would go without saying) Interesting, no?
http://www.state.ma.us/legis/laws/mgl/
woah check out this law:
http://www.state.ma.us/legis/laws/mgl/272-17.htm
It was ammended last year (I read the papers and saw nothing about it!) It
was clearly amended to make it illegal to do things that don't fit the
definition of sexual intercourse. Good to see those reps know all the
words. I'm not sure why those extra things are illegal for adults that are
related to each other but not strictly illegal for unrelated people. I
guess because it is too devestating for both parties afterwards, even if it
was consentual at the time. Or, maybe it is just in cases where some sort
of manipulation occured. But that happens to unrelated people too. Oh
well, nothing good comes of it, so we are protecting people from bad
decisions by saying that some adults can't do things, even consentually.
Perhaps it's just to give it a harsher sentence than "Lewd and Lascivious
Acts" get. I don't like how they added it on to the incest laws, though,
they should have made a separate law. But THAT is a matter of semantics :-)
My apologies if that was too graphic and too unrelated to MOQ. It is
definitely related to moralty though, and the discussion of how society
controls biology. These laws are part of it, but I think Pirsig is wrong
that we require a policeman to make us follow them. We enforce them
ourselves, when we say no. Sometimes we say no even if we want to say yes.
And it isn't only a rational decision based on avoiding complications and
pain or being faithful to someone, sometimes, beliieve it or not, people say
no because it is wrong. There are times when we could commit a victimless
crime and get away with it, no Pirsigian policeman around for miles. But we
don't because we know it is illegal, even if it would have increased our
personal happiness to do it and we otherwise wanted to.
>RICK
>If Hillary set-up the 3-way, Bill and Monica could do whatever they wanted
>to and it's not adultery (legally speaking).
In my state, as I said, it's clear cut science. Sexual intercourse by a
married person and someone who is not their spouse. There's no mention of
cheating or condoning anything like that.
>The legal doctrines of
>'condonation' (subsequent approval of a spouse's sexual acts with another)
>and 'connivance' (which is like entrapment, ie. wife hires a hooker for
>husband to 'test' his fidelity) defeat claims to divorce based on adultery.
Well, judges and juries are free to look at circumstances of the case and do
what they think is justice, that doesn't change the legal definition of
adultery, it just sets a precedent for the interpreting of law in specific
types of cases. Though they can't expand laws to include things not
mentioned in them, can they? Don't they have to say you found a loophole
and let you go?
>As for whether 2 women can commit adultery, legally, you really couldn't be
>more wrong. Every state has its own definition of what adultery is.
I don't suppose you could link to one such state's law, could you? Or do
you offhand know of which state so I can track it down? I wonder when the
defintion was changed. Probably pretty recently.
>Most
>states, for the purposes of divorce actions, define it broadly in such a
>way
>that includes any purposeful, sexual contact with the genitals or anus of a
>3rd party (don't worry, you can sue your wife for adultery if she carries
>on
>a lesbian affair).
I bet it is related to obscenity being "I know it when I see it". That's
too bad, because obscentiy is clearly a matter of judgement, whereas
intercourse is absolutely black and white. It is risking creating a person,
which is the most significant thing that ever occurs in the universe. World
War Three is less significant than a person coming into being.
>Moreover, adultery (in all states) can be proven by
>circumstantial evidence of 'mutual affection' and 'opportunity' with a
>small
>degree of corroboration (ie. you hire a private detective to follow your
>wife around; he learns from her coworkers that she has the hots for your
>archenemy 'Johnny Immoral'; he follows her to his house everyday at lunch
>at which time she goes in and then comes out an hour later; in her
>appointment book he finds a lunch appointment with "J.I." and it is circled
>in a big heart... that usually would be enough to sustain a jury's finding
>of adultery). So ultimately, nobody is really checking to see what touched
>what.
Kind of like Ken Starr did... But we didn't prove they had intercourse. We
just expected them to tell the truth and the whole truth. But yeah, I
believe you that when it is denied that intercourse took place,
circumstantial evidence such as that is enough to get juries or judges to be
incredulous and assume the witness is lying. That happens in juries
sometimes, right, if the defendent doesn't have a good lawyer? And I bet
sometimes, people get the adultery charged dropped if it can't be proven
that anything more than a succession of short dates occured, if they have a
good lawyer.
>JOHNNY
> > How would you feel about a law, instead of that Brownback anti-cloning
>bill,
> > that didn't mention cloning, but simply said that all babies must be the
> > natural product of one man and one woman? None of us can be geneticly
> > modified. I'd like to say that the man and woman must be married also,
>but
> > that would make it more complicated, so I'll leave that out.
>
>RICK
>I think my past representations to you should make it pretty obvious that I
>would be against every element your law.
Just want to make sure that everyone realizes this. People who support gay
marriage, relaxing divorce, abortion, etc, don;t always realize that they
will have to support human genetic engineering when the question is put to
them.
>RICK
>Personally, I wouldn't think of it as applying technology to evolve the
>species faster as I would think of it applying the technology to make
>people's lives better.
OK, but it is acting on the germline, unless you are planning on putting the
Terminator gene in our children. I guess the bad experiments will die off,
and the good experiments will get passed on.
> Moreover, I don't think that these technological
>advances are necessarily contrary to the stability of the biological level
>(potentially? maybe, but hey, everything in the universe is 'potentially'
>dangerous... so that's not much help).
Not so much the stability, but the staticness. It's the equivilent of
society messing with the atom. Oh hey, we did that, didn't we? Nuclear
explosions generally don't happen on planets. Does fission happen in nature
anywhere? Suns are fusion, right?
>>RICK
>I agree that the existence or imminent existence of a child is a very
>important factor to consider, but I don't think it should be ultimately
>determinative. Often parents who stay together for this reason alone wind
>up creating a home environment that is far worse for the child than it
>would
>be growing up in the custody of only one of the parents (or with a natural
>parent and a step-parent.
Kids with step parents are usually messed up. Kids with bickering fighting
parents are often messed up. Kids with perfect parents are almost always
messed up. Messed up kids are often become the happiest people. None of
that matters anyhow to me, I'm not a Utilitarian, nor am I a believer in the
"best interest of the child". I just believe in morality.
>RICK
>Well, this seems a bit glib for my tastes, but if you really believe it
>then
>you've got nothing to worry about :-).
Isn't that the kind of thing we are supposed to believe? I'm losing my
hair, I sure hope my wife finds baldness attactive on me, even if she
doesn't on anyone else. (Did I tell you it's our twentieth anniversary this
year? Twenty years of sober, faithful, normal coitus. That's the Morals!
Yes indeed.)
>Nobody will get divorced due to
>fatness if getting heavier doesn't make people seem less attractive.
True. Now think about Rueben's era of Rubenesque women (I wonder if he
likes to have fat women named after him?). Attraction itself is a matter of
social norms (and intellectual, and biological, and i guess inorganic
pheremones are important too).
>JOHNNY
> > Yes, I agree. No one should marry someone they aren't attracted to.
>
>RICK
>Now you just have to agree to what I actually said, which was that
>sometimes, people shouldn't STAY MARRIED to someone they aren't attracted
>to.
Oh, but I think they should, they should stay attracted.
JM
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