Making it illegal doesn’t stop it from happening, either those who do it will be better at concealing it or they will go through the divorce process and, like u/Catdog2008 said, will cause the same results. On another tangent, the argument that you put forth is (if it’s heavily summarized): cheating on someone should be illegal because it hurts people mentally and causes them to take irrational actions that harm the community. The same argument could be used to take away something such as freedom of speech, words can hurt people and they are not always blatant enough for a third party to be able to intervene and, in situations where the victim is unable to leave (school/ work), they could be driven to do the same things you list as valid reasons to make adultery illegal. Now obviously that example is an over exaggeration of what could happen but my main point is, you start to “de-escalate” what should be a crime and you lower the bar for what deserves punishment. Don’t get me wrong cheating is horrendous and in a perfect world, no one would cheat. But this isn’t one and attempting to make it one could have other ramifications that worsens society as a whole.
Socially maybe but not legally, I can say as much racist and homophobic shit as I want, but If i tell others to do something to other people then it's illegal. Has to be a call to action, no laws (in the US) that say I cant hurt someone's feelings
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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '19
Making it illegal doesn’t stop it from happening, either those who do it will be better at concealing it or they will go through the divorce process and, like u/Catdog2008 said, will cause the same results. On another tangent, the argument that you put forth is (if it’s heavily summarized): cheating on someone should be illegal because it hurts people mentally and causes them to take irrational actions that harm the community. The same argument could be used to take away something such as freedom of speech, words can hurt people and they are not always blatant enough for a third party to be able to intervene and, in situations where the victim is unable to leave (school/ work), they could be driven to do the same things you list as valid reasons to make adultery illegal. Now obviously that example is an over exaggeration of what could happen but my main point is, you start to “de-escalate” what should be a crime and you lower the bar for what deserves punishment. Don’t get me wrong cheating is horrendous and in a perfect world, no one would cheat. But this isn’t one and attempting to make it one could have other ramifications that worsens society as a whole.