Um, wow. These people are crazy.

I saw this over at AmericaBlog – so hat tip for finding this hunk of whackjobbery. The wingnuts on the Michigan Court of Appeals have determined that extramarital sex is first degree sexual misconduct, punishable by life in prison. Read that again, please. Here’s how - the Michigan Legislature passed a law that defined first degree sexual misconduct as when "sexual penetration occurs under circumstances involving the commission of any other felony." So the Court of Appeals drew the conclusion that adultery, still a felony on the books there, met the legal standard. And that kids, is that.

Banging the secretary, while not a position advocated on this site (ha, position – get it!), can land one in the pokey (stop – I am killing me) forever.

My point here is that Michigan has crossed a legal Rubicon into some very weird territory; territory currently occupied by the likes of some of the most repressive theocratic states on the planet (cough – Taliban, cough). At its broadest meaning, the law has been interpreted to mean that fucking someone other than your spouse is criminal behavior. Now, to be fair, there are places where if one is of the fairer sex, one is stoned to death for similar behavior. Men have it a bit better, as one would imagine. Punishment, like genitalia, is extremely variable and so are the other questions in this scramble of legal eggs. So what if you are separated, in an open marriage, or have some other nebulous circumstance? The judges’ holding, to my mind, made no distinction, you criminal pervert.

And yes, the whole thing is absurd. As the article mentioned, the State Attorney General is an admitted adulterer. The smart money says NO ONE gets prosecuted for this, but the situation looks suspiciously like the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent. Yeah, nobody is looking at a charge now. It is the next crazy thing that ought to worry us. And worry me it shall, for a dam breaks not all at once, but one small crack at a time.