TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/100190/1001140.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 4KB | 88 lines

                                                                                LIVING, Page 98

Handing Out Scarlet Letters


Antiquated sex laws turn into a bludgeon for divorcing spouses


    When James Jakubowski's marriage was heading toward the
rocks, he decided to take action: he called the police. Two
weeks later, his wife Dawn was under arrest for adultery. Like
a modern-day Hester Prynne, Dawn was soon the talk of the town,
Norwich, Conn., a circumstance that does not dismay her
husband. "People in this society need to hear that adultery is
wrong and that it destroys families," he proclaims. "I believe
in the institution of marriage." His wife's lawyer is less
enthused. "The thoughtless and insensitive act by Mr. Jakubowski
has caused enormous embarrassment and humiliation to all
members of his family," she says.

    Dawn, who denies the charges, is one of the unlucky people
who have found themselves hounded by an angry spouse in a state
where old-fashioned sex statutes are still on the books. In a
quirky twist to the contemporary no-fault-divorce saga,
venerable adultery laws are occasionally being invoked by
quarreling marital partners, sometimes for vindictive purposes
and sometimes to gain leverage in lengthy settlement
negotiations. In the weeks after Dawn's arrest, two other
Connecticut women and one man were also charged with adultery.
They face the same possible misdemeanor punishment: up to a
year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

    Usually, the targeted spouse is a woman. "This is the '90s
version of public flogging," says Catherine Blinder of the
Connecticut Commission on the Status of Women. "Women have
always been persecuted for infidelity." In July Donna Carroll,
a Janesville, Wis., homemaker, completed 40 hours of community
service and attended a parenting session after her estranged
husband charged her with adultery. While she denied the
allegation, she agreed to the punishment in order to avoid a
trial and the possibility of up to two years in jail and a
$10,000  fine.

    The incidence of adultery laws, as well as statutes
prohibiting fornication (two unmarried people having sex),
traces a hig-gledy-piggledy pattern across the national map.
Adultery is still illegal in about half the 50 states,
including New York, Massachusetts and Michigan; enforcement of
the strictures is normally a dead letter. But since there is no
organized constituency to demand their repeal, the
prohibitions remain as bludgeons to be picked up in marital
brawls. Says Ronald Allen, a professor of law at Northwestern
University: "Who wants to come out in public in favor of
adultery?" Primarily, the American Civil Liberties Union, which
wages a campaign against the statutes whenever they are
debated.

    The difficulties for heterosexuals branded with the scarlet
letter are similar to those for gays, who are vulnerable to the
most frequently invoked sex laws: those prohibiting sodomy. In
1986 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of states to ban
homosexual sodomy, and since then, gay and civil rights
activists have been fighting the increasing number of
prosecutions. Nor are sodomy laws exclusively aimed at gays;
heterosexual sodomy is deemed an impermissible act in 18 states.

says Robert Bray of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
"And if it isn't 10 toes up and 10 toes down, heterosexuals
risk going to jail too."

    On the other hand, some conservatives and Fundamentalist
Christian denominations praise the sex laws as an expression
of a collective conscience, however they are used. "If these
laws had been enforced with regularity in this country, then
a lot more people would think twice about participating in
sexually immoral acts," says Rebecca Hagelin of Concerned Women
for America, a Washington-based lobbying organization. Warring
spouses take note.


By Andrea Sachs. Reported by Anne Hopkins/New York.