South Korea ‘legalizes’ adultery

Portrayal of David Confronted by the
Prophet Nathan for Committing Adultery

South Korea ‘legalized’ adultery today:

February 26, 2015

South Korea’s Constitutional Court on Thursday struck down a 62-year-old law that made adultery an offense punishable by up to two years in prison, citing the country’s changing sexual mores and a growing emphasis on individual rights.

“It has become difficult to say that there is a consensus on whether adultery should be punished as a criminal offense,” five of the court’s nine justices said in a joint opinion. “It should be left to the free will and love of people to decide whether to maintain marriage, and the matter should not be externally forced through a criminal code.”

Two other justices voted to declare the law unconstitutional for other reasons. A two-thirds majority was required to strike down the law.

An estimated 53,000 South Koreans have been indicted under the law since the authorities began keeping count in 1985. But in recent years, it has been increasingly rare for defendants to go to prison, in part because courts have demanded stronger proof that sexual intercourse had taken place. Additionally, more plaintiffs have been dropping charges after reaching financial settlements.

The law had been challenged four times before at the Constitutional Court since 1990, always unsuccessfully. In the last attempt, in 2008 — in a case brought by a popular actress, Ok So-ri, whose husband had pressed a criminal complaint against her — the justices came within one vote of striking the law down. More than 5,000 people who have been indicted on adultery charges since that 2008 ruling can now seek a new trial or, if they have not been convicted, demand that the charges be dropped.

The adultery law was adopted in 1953, with the stated purpose of protecting women who had little recourse against cheating husbands in a male-dominated society. But divorce rates and women’s economic and legal standing have soared in the decades since, leaving many to argue that the law had outlived its usefulness. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/world/asia/south-korea-strikes-down-adultery-law.html?_r=0

God’s laws against adultery are ancient and have not outlived their usefulness.

While we all know the Bible teaches, “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14; Romans 2:22), the Constitutional Court in South Korea seeming believes that adultery is a ‘freedom’ that should not be criminalized.

Of course, adultery is not new. Yet, the trend towards turning against God’s laws was prophesied for these last days long ago (2 Timothy 3:1-7). Sadly, South Korea has decided to more fulfill this.

Adulterers are deceiving themselves and harming society:

13…They are spots and blemishes, carousing in their own deceptions while they feast with you, 14 having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls. They have a heart trained in covetous practices, and are accursed children. (2 Peter 2:13-15)

Laws against adultery protect not only women, but also the family and society. This is decision is not good for South Korea.

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