At least, it's illegal in Georgia. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020628/ap_wo_en_po/us_fornication_statute_1 Civil liberties group challenges U.S. state law that make sex outside of marriage illegal ATLANTA - Civil liberties activists have filed a legal brief with the Supreme Court of Georgia challenging a law that outlaws sexual intercourse between unmarried couples. According to the 2000 census, nearly 150,000 Georgians live together as unmarried couples. "We hope this case finally gets the state of Georgia out of our bedrooms," American Civil Liberties Union ( news - web sites) Foundation of Georgia attorney Beth Littrell said in a statement. "Most unmarried people would be outraged if they knew that their private, consensual expressions of intimacy turned them into criminals." In 1998, the court overturned an anti-sodomy law, saying it violated the Georgia Constitution's guarantee of a right to privacy. The American Family Association, based in Tupelo, Mississippi, said the challenge, filed on Tuesday, was to marriage, not to an antiquated law. Living together outside of marriage "is a social experiment with little history, but what little history we have shows it's doomed to failure," AFA attorney Bryan J. Brown said.
THATS why I'm not getting any up here. Here I was thinking it was because I stay on this site all day or something.
Since more than 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, I guess it is doomed to failure too. Oh, brother.
One of the many reasons why you have to love Georgia. Don't forget the "no buying alcohol on Sunday" law that still exists.
Heres another example of life up here in the peach state. http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/metro/0602/28bedroom.html Clayton teen's case could overturn fornication law By BILL RANKIN Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer The 16-year-old Fayette County girl placed a stool in front of her bedroom door to keep anyone from barging in on her and her boyfriend. They knew they were being naughty. They never imagined they were breaking the law. They were caught in the act last September when the girl's mother burst into the room. The girl had already had troubles with the law. She was old enough under Georgia law to have consensual sex, but her probation officer, after learning of the tryst, pressed charges under the state's fornication statute. Both teenagers were found guilty in Fayette Juvenile Court. The girl, identified in court papers as J.D., was sent to boot camp. The Clayton County boy, identified as J.M., also 16, was ordered to pay a fine and write an essay. The boy's lawyer and the American Civil Liberties Union are now appealing his case to the Georgia Supreme Court in an attempt to overturn the state's fornication statute. Under Georgia law, any person, no matter how old, can be found guilty of a misdemeanor when he or she has sexual intercourse with another person outside wedlock. Conviction carries a sentence of up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine. "The case stands for the rights of all Georgia citizens to their privacy, their right to engage in private sexual relationships they care about and not have interference from the government," said Catherine Sanderson, a Peachtree City lawyer representing the boy. "Unless you're married, you have to be celibate under the law," Sanderson added. "The state has no business making that law or enforcing it." She noted that the teenagers' parents did not ask police to press charges. Most states have repealed or overturned their fornication statutes, and in 1998, the Georgia Supreme Court overturned the state's sodomy law on privacy grounds. "We cannot think of any other activity that reasonable persons would rank as more private and more deserving of protection from governmental interference than consensual, private, adult sexual activity," Justice Robert Benham wrote for the court in the 6-1 decision. That decision overturned a sodomy conviction against Anthony Powell of Norcross. Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter said Thursday that "given the reasoning of the Georgia Supreme Court in the Powell case, it wouldn't surprise me to see them latch onto this one." Porter, however, added that the "get-the-government-out-of-the-bedroom rhetoric used by the ACLU is nice to hear, but it's not the practical use this statute is put to." Most often, he said, the fornication statute is used to prosecute public sexual conduct. "I don't think the government -- and I know I don't -- has any intent [of] going into the bedroom of consenting adults," he said. "But the state does have a legitimate interest in trying to control the sexual activity of juveniles." Fayette County District Attorney Bill McBroom, whose office prosecuted the teens, did not return phone calls seeking comment. Gerry Weber, the ACLU's legal director in Atlanta, said the court should rule in the teenager's favor because they were having sex in a private bedroom -- not a public place. "This is a completely antiquated law that intrudes upon the privacy of many Georgia citizens' bedrooms," he said, pointing out that the U.S. census counted about 145,000 unmarried couples in Georgia. "It's a huge number of people who are daily violating a statute that subjects them to up to 12 months in jail. It's just crazy."
Jeff, But how many of them waited till marriage? I would wager couples that waited have a higher success rate than vice versa. Just becasue marriage is not perfect, there is no reason to knock it. 50% is a stat in which non religious people use their infidelities to show marriage doesn't work. People that get divorced don't truly believe in the sanctity of marriage. If you aren't committed, don't get married. Not that I've tried it. I am very picky because of the finality of marriage and the lack of women out there that still believe marriage is more than just two people living together and having sex.
The #1 reason people get divorced: money The #2 reason people get divorced: sexual problems (infidelity, too much, too little, etc) There have been studies that showed that living together has a negligible impact on marriage either way. Same thing with fornication. Actually, the best indicator of divorce for you is the size and expense of your wedding. The more expensive and the larger your wedding, the more likely you are to divorce. Wierd as it may sound, it apparently has something to do with wedding-day expectations versus everyday life. Anyway, the point I'm making is that the rate of divorce is more than half. By those numbers, more marriages are doomed to failure than those blessed with success. By this group's standards, we should simply do away with marriage too because it is fundamentally flawed based on that concept.
Yeah, I hate it when people use statistical information to back up what they are saying. Give me a good old fashioned baseless claim anyday. :rollseyes: damn no working smilies!!!!!!
Dan Dickau, get out while you still can . You'all are messed up down there. It must be the peach cobbler has gone bad. I would like a small wedding. Everybody brings there own food. Is that cheap?
Great, ANOTHER FU>>ING waste of my tax dollars. This is really starting to piss me off....don't people have better things to do, we should introduce all lawyers to this site, at least then they would be too busy posting here to file frivolous lawsuites. DaDakota
I hope Dan Dickau gets out of there, his girl is a babe. Jacobsen's girl is a dog compared to Dickau's. I might as well put up a link for people who don't know. You can check her out here. I think marriage is a good thing, but no way does the govt need to be involved with that. Conservatives amaze me. They support little or no regulation on business, yet they want the govt to regulate people's personal lives. The list goes on, no homosexual marriage, no sex out of wedlock laws, trying to make Christianity the official religion, Bush's plans that make it hard for single mothers to get help unless they marry. This whole puritan, "everybody needs to be married even if they don't love eachother" way of life has got to go. By the way, I don't mean all conservatives/republicans, I'm talking about the religious right, you know, guys like Falwell, Graham, and Pat Robertson.
Great, ANOTHER FU>>ING waste of my tax dollars. This is really starting to piss me off....don't people have better things to do, we should introduce all lawyers to this site, at least then they would be too busy posting here to file frivolous lawsuites. So you think it should be illegal to have sex if you're not married? By the way, unless you live in Georgia, your tax dollars aren't paying for their state courts.
Every study I've ever seen on this says exactly the opposite. I took a class called "Marriage and Family" in my last semester of college, and we spent quite some time discussing this issue. Fornication, I'm not certain about. And from my own experience, I'd agree that larger weddings == higher divorce rates, but I don't have any figures to back that up. But as far as cohabitation (living together), I need to find my research from that class, but I believe it was somewhere around 1 in 5 cohabitation arrangements leads to marriage, and of those marriages, 80% end in failure. Marriages where cohabitation existed prior to marriage exhibited more arguments, less communication, less sexual intercourse and more dissatisfaction. I'll see if I can dig up any of the specifics in my old papers to get the exact information. I did write a large paper on money and marriage though. Money is the #1 cause of marital failure in the first year. It was pretty astounding to read some of the statistics and information that I came across when I researched this topic. Couples who discuss money prior to marriage end up having a TREMENDOUS advantage over those who don't. Also, money's significance in divorce decreases dramatically after the first year. The thing is, it's not MONEY specifically that causes marriages to go sour, but people's attitudes. Money is really a vehicle for people's view of power, authority and other issues.
