[ql06] CRIMINAL: Judges and Dictionaries
- From: "Ken Campbell" <2kc16@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <ql06@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 09:44:25 -0500
I wasn't sure what the following informs as to our studies... But then I
had to pass it along, for the "I Can't Believe It" file. (Like that
Toronto bus & insurance scam.)
Then it hit me. Why Gary Trotter loves to criticize judges for turning
to dictionaries to help them comes to decisions.
The state of New Hampshire ("Live Free Or Die" is its motto) high court
is apparently trying to encourage homosexual affairs in marriage by
excusing them from sanction. What a progressive place.
And Bill was right all along: He did not commit adultery with Monica.
(At least not in N.H.)
Ken.
--
'Tis strange - but true; for truth is always
strange; Stranger than fiction.
-- Lord Byron
"Don Juan"
--- cut here ---
N.H. High Court Says Gay Sex Not Adultery
By ANNE SAUNDERS Associated Press Writer
Friday, Nov. 7, 2003
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - If a married woman has sex with another woman, is
that adultery? The New Hampshire Supreme Court, ruling in a divorce
case, says no.
The court was asked to review a case in which a husband accused his wife
of adultery after she had a sexual relationship with another woman.
Robin Mayer of Brownsville, Vt., was named in the divorce proceedings of
David and Sian Blanchflower of Hanover.
A Family Court judge decided Mayer and Sian Blanchflower's relationship
did constitute adultery, but Mayer appealed to the Supreme Court,
arguing that gay sex is not adultery under New Hampshire divorce law.
Three of the five justices agreed. Two others - generally considered the
court's more conservative members - did not.
Part of the problem in New Hampshire is that adultery is not defined in
the state's divorce laws. So the court looked up "adultery" in Webster's
dictionary and found that it mentions intercourse. And it found an 1878
case that referred to adultery as "intercourse from which spurious issue
may arise."
Other states, including Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, have
defined adultery in broader terms - beyond intercourse - to include gay
sex.
"I think the majority opinion is unintentionally trivializing same-sex
relations and violating modern notions of the sanctity of marriage,"
said Marcus Hurn, a professor at Franklin Pierce Law Center.
A sexual relationship, whether heterosexual or homosexual, is "exactly
an equivalent betrayal and that, I think, is the ordinary meaning most
people would give."
But the majority did not want the New Hampshire courts to step onto the
slippery slope of defining which sex acts outside of intercourse might
amount to adultery.
"This standard would permit a hundred different judges ... to decide
just what individual acts are so sexually intimate as to meet the
definition," the court said.
The dissenters said adultery should be defined more broadly to include
other intimate extramarital sexual activity.
A relationship is adulterous "because it occurs outside of marriage and
involves intimate sexual activity, not because it involves only one
particular sex act," said Chief Justice David Brock and Justice John
Broderick.
David Blanchflower had no comment on the ruling. Sian Blanchflower and
Mayer did not immediately return calls for comment.
2003-11-07 21:27:00 GMT
Other related posts:
- » [ql06] CRIMINAL: Judges and Dictionaries
