Women’s right groups and legal experts called for the decriminalization of adultery after South Korea’s Constitutional Court overturned a decades-old anti-cheating law last week.
Taiwan is one of the few nations where extramarital sex is a criminal offense — punishable by a jail term of up to 12 months.
The adultery law should have been scrapped long ago, Judicial Reform Foundation executive director Kao Jung-chih (高榮志) said.
Taiwan is the only non-Muslim nation where adultery is a crime, except for China, which has a law forbidding adultery with military spouses, lawyer and women’s rights advocate Yueh Chen (岳珍) said.
The government should align itself with the global trends in decriminalizing adultery, she said.
Citing a poll conducted by the Ministry of Justice in 2013, Deputy Minister of Justice Wu Chen Huan (吳陳鐶) said that more than 70 percent of respondents said that the adultery offense in the Criminal Code should not be expunged, adding that the law treats male and female adulterers equally.
The Council of Grand Justices gave Interpretation No. 554 in 2002 and ruled that the adultery offense is in line with the Constitution, saying that a relationship outside marriage is not protected by the freedom of personal behavior enshrined in the Constitution.
No further constitutional interpretation related to the adultery law has been requested since, Wu Chen said.
Society should refer to ethics rather than the law when it comes to adultery, Awakening Foundation secretary-general Lin Hsiu-yi (林秀怡) said, adding that the ministry had justified maintaining the criminal statute by saying that South Korea considered adultery a crime as well.
The ministry and the legislature should follow South Korea’s steps by decriminalizing adultery, she said.
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