Several prosecutors have voiced support for decriminalizing adultery as the Council of Grand Justices on Tuesday heard arguments that treating adultery as a crime is unconstitutional.
Eighteen judges and a defendant in an adultery case have over the past several years repeatedly asked the council for a constitutional interpretation of Article 239 of the Criminal Code, which stipulates that a married person who commits adultery and the other party to the adultery should each receive a prison term of less than one year, but that there can be no trial without a complaint from an alleged victim.
Judicial Yuan President Hsu Tzong-li (許宗力) concluded Tuesday’s hearing by setting a date for a constitutional interpretation of the matter within the next month.
One prosecutor said on condition of anonymity that while it might seem that Article 239 is necessary to keep families intact, in reality it does not help reduce the divorce rate.
Legal proceedings for adultery waste judicial resources and force spouses to confront each other in court, so it is questionable whether criminalizing adultery is even necessary, they said.
Another problem is that judges often require alleged victims to prove that their spouses had sex with a third party, which can force complainants to breach privacy laws when trying to collect evidence, the prosecutor said.
If the complainant is then counter-sued for breaching privacy laws, the question of who is actually punished during court proceedings for adultery becomes murky, they said.
Another prosecutor said on condition of anonymity that the punishment for an adultery conviction is meaningless, as the sentence imposed is almost always commutable to a fine.
“How could a change in one’s feelings possibly be altered by a fine of hundreds of thousands of [New Taiwan] dollars?” the prosecutor said, adding that a verdict cannot help rebuild a relationship when it is already broken beyond repair.
Ministry of Justice head prosecutor Lin Ying-tzu (林映姿) said that Taiwanese society has yet to reach a consensus on whether to decriminalize adultery.
In the most recent government-conducted public opinion poll on the topic, which was posted on an Executive Yuan Web site in 2016, 85 percent of 10,755 respondents said that they opposed the decriminalization of adultery, Lin said.
A Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation poll in 2017 found that 69 percent of people were opposed to decriminalization, Lin added.
Most people seem to be opposed to the idea of decriminalizing adultery due to social mores and might find it hard to accept immediate abolishment, Lin said.
The Coalition for the Happiness of Our Next Generation, a non-governmental organization that led the charge against same-sex marriage in referendums held in November 2018, said that it opposed the decriminalization of adultery.
The law “strengthens people’s respect of marriage, and protects the institution of marriage and the family,” the group said in a statement.
The group rejected the argument that the article should be abolished if it fails in its stated purpose to deter people from committing adultery.
“If we follow this logic, then we should also abolish homicide-related laws if they cannot prevent people from committing murder,” it said.
Fast food chain McDonald's is to raise prices by up to NT$5 on some products at its restaurants across Taiwan, starting on Wednesday next week, the company announced today. The prices of all extra value meals and sharing boxes are to increase by NT$5, while breakfast combos and creamy corn soup would go up by NT$3, the company said in a statement. The price of the main items of those meals, if ordered individually, would remain the same. Meanwhile, the price of a medium-sized lemon iced tea and hot cappuccino would rise by NT$3, extra dipping sauces for chicken nuggets would go up
Yangmingshan National Park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) nature area has gone viral after a park livestream camera observed a couple in the throes of intimate congress, which was broadcast live on YouTube, drawing large late-night crowds and sparking a backlash over noise, bright lights and disruption to wildlife habitat. The area’s livestream footage appeared to show a couple engaging in sexual activity on a picnic table in the park on Friday last week, with the uncensored footage streamed publicly online. The footage quickly spread across social media, prompting a tide of visitors to travel to the site to “check in” and recreate the
Minister of Digital Affairs Lin Yi-ching (林宜敬) yesterday cited regulatory issues and national security concerns as an expert said that Taiwan is among the few Asian regions without Starlink. Lin made the remarks on Facebook after funP Innovation Group chief executive officer Nathan Chiu (邱繼弘) on Friday said Taiwan and four other countries in Asia — China, North Korea, Afghanistan and Syria — have no access to Starlink. Starlink has become available in 166 countries worldwide, including Ukraine, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, in the six years since it became commercial, he said. While China and North Korea block Starlink, Syria is not
GROUNDED: A KMT lawmaker proposed eliminating drone development programs and freezing funding for counterdrone systems, despite China’s adoption of the technology China has deployed attack drones at air bases near the Taiwan Strait in a strategy aimed at overwhelming Taiwan’s air defense systems through saturation attacks, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. The council’s latest quarterly report on China said that satellite imagery and open-source intelligence indicate that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had converted retired J-6 fighter jets into J-6W drones, which the PLA has stationed at six air bases near Taiwan, five in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province. The report cited J. Michael Dahm, a senior fellow at the US-based Mitchell Institute, as saying that China has
RSS