Right.

Everything else is a weighty assumption that can't be proven. Some would consider his wife a hero for standing strong. Others (like myself) would consider his wife an idiot for standing there. But, none of us know what's going on in their household.

I didn't even think about that. Good point. Shows where his heart is.

Fair enough, I'd buy that.

Exactly what I was referring to in my previous posts about Constitutionality, and probably shorter than what I would have posted. Thank you.

How would it violate the legal contract of marriage, though?

Is she really standing there? I didn't know that. One article I read said that she had asked him to leave and stop speaking to her two weeks ago. I got the impression that she was politely telling him to kick rocks.

Isn't adultery still grounds for divorce in most states, or have we gone entirely no-fault in how we award divorces?

Sexual fidelity, it would seem to me, to be a default part of what you were agreeing to when you got married.

Marriage is weird when you start to think about it. What does it really mean these days other than receiving the state's blessing on your union, compelling your employer to offer whatever benefits it might offer, and filing taxes together?

How romantic.

True, but I can't think of any other instance where breach (violation) of a contract is a criminal offense.

That's sort of where the rubber would hit the road: What is the state's legitimate interest in criminalizing conduct that otherwise may be protected by constitutional privacy rights? If a contract analysis is being applied, it is the non-breaching party who has the legitimate interest in seeking redress for the breach, not the government.

As for adultery vs. no-fault, in some states, you can't get alimony under no-fault. Adultery or some other fault will have to be shown if you're looking for anything beyond division of property or child support.

Thanks for your answers, guys!

Who knows. Maybe she is the ballbuster that BabyPink_FL said she is. :)

So if she really told him to kick rocks, how does that work with your theory about women of money, power, and prestige?

lol She may be a ballbuster.

My theory about her being content with her money, power, and prestige was in reference to whether she might sue the mistress.

YES!! i noticed that too. Mentioning the wife and boys seemed almost an afterthought. What a bizarre press conference.

when i first heard that noone had seen hide nor hair of the governor for 7 days, i said to my husband,"mistress"!

Ohhhhh--due to the rarity of mistress lawsuits, that makes your theory automatically right and any woman who wouldn't sue the mistress wouldn't be doing so because of money, power, and prestige. Even poor women. :p

I actually cringed and said "are you going to mention your wife and kids?"

Yes, that's the ideal mistress (or young lovers running away from a judgmental world :p) getaway.

in which country or both? his political career would seem shot. is he human of course he is. he did not think he would get caught? what a dummy!
does anyone know what evil lurks in the hearts on the male species. say goodby gov and your life as an important person.

I think one of my questions is getting answered....whose money he spent to go and this looks like this was for last year's trip:


COLUMBIA, S.C. — One day after admitting an affair, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford reunited with his wife and sons and announced he will reimburse the state for a trip he took last year in which he met his Argentinean mistress.

Sanford said he "made a mistake" in seeing the woman last June during a trade mission to Brazil and Argentina. State records indicate he spent more than $8,000 in airfare, lodging and meals. The governor's spokesman, Joel Sawyer, said Thursday that Sanford will pay back the money spent in Argentina. Sawyer had said earlier that no state resources were used.

Republican state Sen. Jake Knotts called for an investigation. "That's like a bank robber getting caught and wanting to return the money," Knotts said. "He should strongly consider resigning."

Sanford resigned Wednesday as chairman of the Republican Governors Association but said he'd "let the chips fall where they may" otherwise. He spent Thursday at his family's beach house near Charleston after spending Father's Day weekend in Buenos Aires.

Knotts said the use of taxpayer money was too much to accept from a onetime presidential contender who made his name as a staunch fiscal conservative.

link

It's hard for me to see why he shouldn't resign.

It's pretty clear he self-destructed; if members of your own party want you out and you've clearly screwed up. . . .

I understand self-interested behavior, but he's not just undermining his own success at this point.

The state funding the boom-boom-room trip was the turning point for me. It's just so weird.

Me too - at that point, it goes from "embarrasing personal story" to a major issue with his governmental responsibilities.

whether legal in either country or not, he is in a long line of political figures who have strayed and I am sure will not be the last. He should do the manly thing and step down as his political star has dimmed greatly. who can trust him now? should he pay the money back he use, dar, that is a given! it was not for the people of his state but for his lustful ways. just say good by and fade into the sunset. wonder if there could be a club started where he could join or at least a program he could enroll in?

Weirdly, despite not completely considering his going missing for a few days OR his having an affair as necessarily being resignation worthy on their own, the combo of those two alone, even without the previous state funded trip, are enough to make me say that he should be done. The flakiness reflects on his competence.

(A guy under work related stress can completely detach himself from work for a few days, in my opinion. If your extra-martial affair hits the public, you could try to serve out your term if your ability to govern wasn't otherwise affected. But you can't just flake out, leave town, and go see your mistress for a few days to break up. Nope.)

The other trip on the taxpayers' dime just formalizes it.

And, it just seems really selfish to try to hold on. Who benefits from his not resigning? Only he does, as near as I can tell.

a gentleman on gma this morning explained it pretty well. they, the poiticians are held in such high esteem, they feel that they can do so many things because of the male ego. just look at all who in the recent past have done the same thing. he should resign for the betterment of his family ands citizens of the state.
get them out of office and be done with them.

Thank you, MC! I knew that the legal eagles of GC would know the answer.

This sums up the points I was concerned about quite well, although I think MysticCat meant to say, "making adultery illegal would not pass federal constitutional muster." Maybe it would; maybe it wouldn't. I still don't understand how the prospect that a law might be unconstitutional can be a reason for non-enforcement. In other words, it's still the law until stricken from the books. Right? A constitutional challenge would come later.

On the other point, why would it matter where the adultery took place? Sanford and his wife are residents of South Carolina and fall under SC law. If he married his mistress, would he not be guilty of bigamy? Would it be perfectly fine for him to have wives in Argentina, Georgia, North Carolina, etc., just as long as he doesn't have two wives in SC? I think not. By the same token, it shouldn't matter where the adultery took place.

In fact, it seems to me that bigamy is just as questionable constitutionally as adultery, and yet the government goes after bigamy with a vengeance while waving off adultery as not even worthy of consideration. I'm just wondering why.

My guess would be because spouses are granted rights that non-spouses aren't. Similar rights don't apply to adulterers and adulteresses.

I did indeed. Thanks for catching that.
As much as anything, it's a matter of resources. District Attorneys (or whatever they are called in SC) have too much on their plates as it is. They're not likely to use their resources prosecuting adultery cases if there is a reasonable likelihood that a conviction would fall as unconstitutional. Plus, if the governor is the only person whose been charged with adultery in as long as anyone can remember, if I were his lawyer I'd argue selective prosecution. DAs have enough to do with serious crimes without messing with it.
But it does. What constitutes the crime of adultery is sexual intercourse with someone other than your own spouse or with the spouse of someone else. If the intercourse doesn't happen in South Carolina, then no South Carolina law has been broken. No state can criminalize something that happens outside that state's jurisdiction.

Bigamy would work similarly. If the first marriage was entered into in South Carolina, and the second one in Georgia, then it is Georgia where the crime of bigamy would have been committed. What happens in SC or elsewhere is simply that the second "marriage" is not recognized. That is unless the bigamist comes back to SC and holds himself out as married to spouse number two there. I'm not sure, but that might create a situation where SC would have jurisdiction.

From the perspective of someone who works in the area of family law, I hope bigamy/adultery are never declared illegal. While prosecutions never happen (and I don't really see the constitutional defect y'all are honing in on), the illegality does allow us to keep adultery from being claimed as grounds for divorce because as a practical matter, both of the alleged adulterers are going to invoke their 5th Amendment right to STFU when questioned about the alleged act or acts giving rise to the 'for cause' divorce.

In Oklahoma and probably most states, it doesn't make a lick of difference as to property division or anything else whether the divorce is granted for cause unless the proponent of that charge can further prove that there was an expenditure of marital resources in furtherance of the affair (usually tough to do).

I am the lone democrat in a family of conservative republicans and I am already hearing comments like "Bill Clinton was considered a hero but let a republican make one mistake, etc..... Dear Lord! John Ensign and Mark Sanford both said that Bill Clinton should have resigned as a result of his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Sanford called Clinton's actions inexcuseable. Now both Ensign and Sanford have been caught with their pants down and there is a public outcry for them to live up to their own statements: resign because of their behavior. But the response is that those suggesting that they should resign are to quick to condemn and not willing to forgive. Give me a break! This is totally about Sanford's own statements about politicians getting caught with their pants down. Hypocrits

it is interesting to see someone's political career being so magnificently destroyed by the self destruct button. the today show just played part of an interview where sanford admitted "physical contact" with numerous women over the past couple of years, but says of his affair with the argentine woman :it's "a love story"-"she is his soulmate".

crash and burn!

I'm in favor of Sanford resigning, but I'm not sure that the issue with Bill Clinton was exactly the same. The affair was a factor in his impeachment, but it was really just the subject about what he was accused of lying under oath about. Or am I misremembering the scandal?

I suspect that if SC investigates Sanford's trips to Argentina, the issue will escalate to something clearing resignation worthy, but it's hard to make the claim that an affair alone necessarily disqualifies a politician, if we're using history as our judge. (Personally, I've already said I consider it disqualifying, but I don't think history bears it out as a matter of expected conduct. Do you think we'll never hear from John Edwards again, for instance?)

I think using Clinton as the standard is kind of strange because "his affairs" were caught up in sexual harassment allegations and dishonestly about the affairs. I mean, the Bimbo Eruptions (was that the term?) were fairly common knowledge even at the time he first ran for President. I think people forgave him the affairs pretty easily. The expectation that he could avoid testifying honestly about them in a lawsuit related to his similar behavior was too much to ask though. Being President + the affairs + using the actual oval office for tryst + arrogance about avoiding telling the truth = a different set of problems than this particular dumbass in South Carolina.

I can't figure out why no one can get him to stop talking. I understand that the media probably doesn't want him to, but is there no one, personally or politically in South Carolina who can just say, "enough, buddy, enough." "Think of your kids, dude, and shut up."

No, you're remembering correctly.

He keeps on saying crazy stuff, too! "Crossing the ultimate line...soulmate...blah blah blah."

Haha seriously. When I heard that "crossing the ultimate line" nonsense I couldn't believe anyone would actually say that.

I think he needs a priest that he can privately confess to.

I know I've got the denomination wrong (well, he's Episcopal, so he could find a priest, but confession might be weird), but I think might be what's driving him. He wants to confess everything and then hope to be forgiven.

Since I don't think Jenny's willing to play that role, and I love her for that, he's using the media, which is the wrong call.

I agree with that analysis. Maureen Dowd wrote in her column today "a news wire is not a spiritual adivser" but apparently he missed that memo.

There is confession among Episcopalians (formally called "Reconciliation of a Penitent" in the Book of Common Prayer), although SC tends to be fairly low church, so maybe it's not done so much there.

Frankly, I think there's a really interesting religion angle to all of this that the press, not surprisingly, is missing for the most part.

He's acting like Jimmy Swaggart!

I had wondered if Anglicans/Episcopalians had dropped confession entirely since there was a desire to get away from priestly intermediaries for the OP (Original Protestants).

To me, it seems like such a basic spiritual need to respond to, although I find the Catholic requirement too intense to be comfortable personally.

Don't most protestant denominations preach confession through prayer to God?

I think so. I'm (kind of a lame) Roman Catholic, so I'm not 100% sure.

I realize that I may have written that post about confession stupidly. I didn't mean the idea of confessing sins in general as much as I meant a sacrament involving a priest that you confessed to.

It's the priest's response to the confession that I think gives people a real sense of forgiveness sometimes. Your faith in your forgiveness is backed up by someone immediately.

Yes. I think it is something that the Anglicans got away from originally -- it started making a comeback with the Oxford/Anglo-Catholic Movement in the 19th Century.

So far as I know, Luther was the only one of the Reformers who advocated retaining personal confession to a member of the clergy, though I don't know that it has ever been widely practiced among Lutherans.

And shoot, these days even the Presbyterian Book of Common Worship has an order for what is essentially private confession, though I've never heard of anyone using it.