Talk:Fornication

Impt! Please clarify who are the "manualists"

On 12/07/21 the article referred to "manualists" without explaining who they are. I think it's important to fix this because (at least on that date) the "manualists" are part of the article that critiques the Catholic church. I'm agnostic and would really like to understand this critique and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Dovmiester (talk) 08:33, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Though I'm unqualified to say much about manualism, I added what I learned from one good looking academic article. I intend it to be a placeholder for the comments of more qualified people, so I'm leaving this up in hopes of attracting y'all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dovmiester (talk • contribs) 06:35, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

P.S. My comment was " The manualists upheld manuals of moral theology that delineated "precepts (or norms, or rules of conduct) regarding the morality of a wide range of action"." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dovmiester (talk • contribs) 06:44, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Your claim about Fuchs is not sourced. tgeorgescu (talk) 13:28, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Dispute that fornication is not a crime under the common law

According to the revision of 21:28, 25 December 2022‎, regarding the United States, fornication was not a crime under the common law (well it first says it was generally not prosecuted, but confused things further by including the phrase "under the common law", which would be extraneous if it simply wasn't being prosecuted. Then to make a further mess of things, it adds the claim that this position was inherited from the UK.

In these December 2022 edits by User talk:CommonKnowledgeCreator, it is pointed out by a 1785 ruling in Maryland that a 1715 law prohibiting adultery and fornication had been repealed with respect to fornication. This tells us that fornication was a cognizable crime in Maryland until 1715.

Furthermore, since the 1715 repeal of fornication in Maryland did not affect the status of adultery as a crime, we obviously can't treat these as "one and the same" under the law. Note also that we have to be very careful about making generalizations about the common law. "Common law" is not just one thing, it varies by place and time, and while it may be common knowledge that somewhere, as of some date, adultery and/or fornication were common law crimes, it is another thing to say that one or the other were or were not crimes as of some particular point in time in any particular jurisdiction.

Accordingly, I propose to remove the claims that these "common law crimes" were not in force under the common law. Please respond if you have any feedback. Fabrickator (talk) 20:05, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

See also Fornication as Crime in 18th-Century Massachusetts describing that

during the 18th century, white women became the main targets of fornication charges in the Massachusetts judicial system.

According to Fornication Prosecutions beyond the Mainstream Community and the Role of Community Policing in Early Colonial New England:

... authorities still punished couples for fornication even after they had been married for several months if the birth of their first child revealed prior sin...

This pertains to a case in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1672. Further on in the paper, it is noted that

In England, it is unlikely Thomas Cleark and his wife would have been prosecuted for fornication because they were married at the time of the birth of the child. However, in the colonies, where moral rectitude was at the forefront of public concerns, midwives functioned as de facto authorities [to support charges] of suspected fornication...

indicating that cases of fornication that might have not been pursued in England were nevertheless likely to be pursued in the American colonies. Fabrickator (talk) 05:47, 4 January 2023 (UTC)